Sound It Out Parking Lot
When my four year old learned the last few alphabet sounds, I knew that it was time to show him how to blend those sounds together and make words. Learning this new skill would take a lot of practice so I wanted to make the process more fun and motivating by incorporating one of his favorite things: Matchbox cars. Sound It Out Parking Lot is a playful, hands-on way to help kids begin reading.
To Prep, I pulled out a pile of Matchbox cars, a sheet of dot stickers and a black marker. I wrote a different letter on each dot and attached it to the roof of a car. I wanted my son to be able to build a variety of words so I used the letters {p, f, r, d, t, c, m, a, e, i, o and u}.
I grabbed a piece of blue construction paper to use as the parking lot and glued on two strips of yellow construction paper to make parking stalls. {Yellow tape would have made this step even easier but we were all out.}
I placed the {f, i, t} cars in front of the parking lot and invited my son, C, to join me. “Today is a big day!!” I said. “We are going to start sticking letters together to make words. Look at the tops of these three cars. What letters do you see?”
“F, I and T,” he said.
“And what sounds do those letters make?”
“/F/ … /i/ … /t/” he said carefully.
“Great! Now we are going to stick those sounds together like this.” I reached over to the cars and said each sound as I pushed the matching car into a parking stall. “/F/ {pushed the f}, /i/{slid the i}, /t/ {moved the t}.” I pulled the cars out and invited my son to try it too.
We slid the cars out of the stalls again and I showed him how to do it more quickly. My son eagerly repeated after me. After picking up the pace a third time, he figured out the word. “FIT!!” he exclaimed proudly.
“You’ve got it!” I said. “When you stick the letters {f, i and t} together you make the word {fit}. We sounded out the letters slowly at first and then went back to read them more and more quickly until we figured out our word. Now let’s practice again with a new word.” I drove the {i} away and replaced it with an {a}. Following the same process as before, my son was able to sound out his new word {fat}.
We continued swapping out one car at a time to create new words and with each new word he read, my son’s speed and confidence grew a little more. I had so many proud mama moments watching him.
Malia is a National Board Certified elementary teacher turned stay at home mama to three young kids {4, 2.5 and 5 months}. She shares fun learning activities over at Playdough to Plato. Check out her site and follow along with her newest activities by email.
you are brilliant — thank you so much. i am going to gather up our matchbox cars right now.
My youngest son is still a bit to young to work on sounding things out but I’m pinning this idea for him. He loves cars and would have so much fun with this game.
My 4-year-old love cars and car parks. He makes every table, floor etc. his car park!
Absolutely love this idea!
This is wonderful. I’m thinking that it may be a great activity to target other areas of speech, such as syllables and sounds. Thanks for sharing this!
i never would have thought about connecting movement with phonics. This is brilliant. I wonder what else moms can use this philosophy with? I’m staring on my FB fan page. Thank you!