Write and Stick a Sound

Guest Post by Becky of This Reading Mama 

My son {currently 4 years old} loves to “do school” at home.  He asks for it quite often, which warms my heart!  He’s also my child that likes to get into things {like the time he and his sister conspired to pluck 25 keys off the laptop…*sigh*}.  On his recent mission to empty the junk draw in the kitchen, he happened upon some sticky notes.  He wanted to write on them, which gave me an idea- “Write and Stick a Sound”!

This game is SUPER EASY to play and takes hardly any prep time at all, a wonderful thing for a busy mama like me.  All that’s needed are sticky notes and a writing utensil.

We went into our playroom and the game was on! To begin with, I modeled how to play.

1.       We first looked around the room and picked objects together. We isolated the beginning sounds like this /d/-/d/-doll or /g/-/g/-gears.  He was ready!

2.       I wrote down a d on the sticky note and stuck it on the doll.  I wrote down a g and stuck it on the gears.

3.       But then I added a twist.  Me: “This time, I’m going to think of something and you have to figure out what it is.  I will look around the room and pick something.  I’m going to think of the sound I hear at the beginning of it and write down the letter that makes that sound on my sticky note. You have to see if you can figure out what I’m thinking of and stick my letter to it. {Kind of like “I Spy”.}

4.       I wrote an l for lamp and he walked around the room saying, “/l/-/l/-/l/” until he got to the lamp.  He stuck the sticky note on the lamp.  If he had picked another object that started with L, I would have said something like, “Yes!  Ladybug does start with an l, but that’s not what I was thinking of.”

Now, it was his turn!  Before too long our playroom had sticky notes ALL over it- such an awesome sight to see.

Games like this are great, but if your child isn’t ready for it, don’t force it.  These are the ways I knew my son was ready to play:

• He has worked all school year through a Pre-K reading curriculum I designed for him called Reading the Alphabet.  In it, I focused heavily on deepening his ability to hear sounds within words, especially beginning sounds.
• I often hear him “playing” with sounds in words on his own, isolating different sounds in words.
• He knows how to write all his letters {mostly uppercase}
• He likes to sound out and invent the spelling of words and phrases, such as “I HRD A HN.” {I heard a horn.”}

Adaptation: If you feel your child isn’t quite ready to tackle “Write and Stick a Sound”, adapt it by doing the steps together instead of making it a guessing game.  You could also write the letters instead of asking your child to do it.

Becky Spence is a homeschooling mama to four little blessings. She is passionate about teaching, specifically literacy. She is the author of This Reading Mama, where she shares reading and writing activities as well as literacy curricula and printables.