Literacy

Activity - Initial sounds

Words to use with your child: listen, hear, sound, think, take your time, listen again, letter, initial, beginning, word.

Helping children to hear the initial sounds in words is really important for building a strong foundation to help them learn to read and spell later on in their school career.  Gather some baskets, bowls, buckets or similar and label each one with a letter.  Next collect objects from around the home that start with the same sound as the letter.  Ask your child to listen to the name of the object and sort it into the correct basket.  You will need to help them read the letter on the basket. 

Or…

Take the basket around the house and garden and find objects that start with the same sound as the written letter on the basket. 

A good group of letters to begin with are s, a, t, p, i, n.

Activity - Jack and the Beanstalk

Words to use with your child: Jack, beanstalk, grow, tall, high, sky, giant, beans, axe, giant, leaves, poor, cow.

Read or tell the story; Jack and the beanstalk or watch on you tube: https: // www.youtube.com/watch?v=-I_GG5gYZ8c

Activity - Small words

Words to use with your child: make, word, letter, grapheme (the name for a letter in written form), sound, blend, segment, together, say, hear, listen, watch.

Take some old lolly sticks or using strips of paper make some ‘word sticks’ as shown in the photos below.  Write some CVC words (consonant, vowel, consonant) onto the sticks missing out either the beginning, medial or final letter.  Write the vowels a, e, i, o, u onto some pegs or small squares of paper. 

Read the word to your child but show them that there is a letter missing, ask them to help you find it.  You will have to read the letters on the peg, add in the wrong one and read the word with the wrong sound, ask them if it sounds right.  Keep going until you and your child have repaired the word.

You will have to scaffold this activity for your child by helping to read the letters.  You will have lots of fun reading the funny words.

Here are some suggestions of words you could write:

• hat
• cat
• rat
• mat
• pin
• pan
• pen
• hen
• man
• van
• log
• dog
• box
• fox
• pig