Early reading
First Sounds: The Listening Skill That Comes Before Reading
Before a child can read "cat", they need to hear that it starts with "c". That listening skill can be practised anywhere, with no books at all.
We tend to think of reading as something to do with eyes and letters. It starts with ears. Before a child can make sense of letters on a page, they need to notice that spoken words are made of smaller sounds. "Cat" is not one lump of noise. It is three sounds in a row.
Teachers call this phonemic awareness. It is not obvious to a small child, and it is one of the most useful things you can practise before school and in the first year.
Sounds, not letter names
There is a difference between a letter's name and the sound it usually stands for. The letter S is called "ess". The sound it makes at the start of "sun" is a hiss: "sss".
For early reading, the sounds matter more. A child who knows only the names will try to read "cat" as "see-ay-tee", which sounds nothing like the word. A child who knows the sounds can say "c", "a", "t" and hear the word come together.
When you say sounds to a child, try to keep them short and clean. It is "mmm", not "muh". It is "sss", not "suh". The extra "uh" gets in the way when sounds are joined.
A rough order of difficulty
Children usually manage these steps in roughly this order.
- Hearing the first sound. "What does 'fish' start with?"
- Hearing the last sound. "What is at the end of 'bus'?"
- Hearing the middle sound. "What is in the middle of 'cat'?" This is the hardest, because vowels are short and blur into their neighbours.
- Blending. You say "s", "u", "n" and your child hears "sun". This is what reading needs.
- Splitting. Your child hears "sun" and says "s", "u", "n". This is what spelling needs.
Games with no equipment
I spy with sounds. "I spy something beginning with mmm." Use the sound, not the letter name.
Odd one out. "Sun, sock, moon. Which one starts differently?"
Robot talk. Say a word in separate sounds, like a robot: "c, u, p". Your child says the word. Take turns. This is blending, and children love being the robot.
Sound hunt. Pick a sound for the day. Find things around the house or on a walk that start with it.
Silly names. Change the first sound of everyone's name to the same one. Children find this very funny, and it is exactly the right skill.
All of these work in the car, in a queue and at the table. None needs a book or a screen.
Joining sounds to letters
Once a child can hear first sounds, the alphabet starts to make sense. Letters stop being shapes with names and become the way sounds are written down.
That is the step our game Starts With practises. A picture of a fish appears next to "_ish", and four letters are offered. Your child says the word, listens to how it begins and picks the letter.
Say the word aloud together, slowly. Stretch the first sound: "fffish". If your child picks the wrong letter, say the word again and then say the sound of the letter they chose, so they can hear the difference.
Finish the Word goes a step further. The gap may be at the start, in the middle or at the end of a short word such as "c_t". The middle is where most children need help. Say the word slowly and exaggerate the vowel.
Word and Picture is the other way round: the whole word is written, and your child reads it and finds the picture.
Awkward facts about English
English spelling is not tidy. The letter C says "c" in "cat" and "s" in "city". Some sounds need two letters, like "sh" and "ch". Schools introduce these gradually.
In the early games here we have kept to short words where the letters behave as a beginner expects. Even so, pictures can be named in more than one way. If your child calls the picture a "bunny" when the word is "rabbit", that is a sensible answer. Just tell them the word the game has in mind.
Follow the school
Schools teach letters and sounds in a set order, and different schools use different programmes. If your child has started school, ask which sounds they have covered and concentrate on those. It is more helpful to practise what they are learning than to race ahead.
If it is slow
Some children hear sounds in words easily. Others take much longer, and that is a wide normal range. If your child is well into school and still finds it very hard to hear first sounds, mention it to their teacher. It is worth knowing early, and teachers would rather be asked.
A little, often
Five minutes of sound games a day, most of it spoken, is worth more than a long session. The HTML5 games on StarSlate are meant as a small part of that: eight questions, two or three minutes, and then back to I spy.