Sound awareness activities - Newcastle Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust

Listening to sounds

Your child needs to hear the first sound in a word to learn how they should say it. When your child understands that what they say is different, they can start to learn to change what they say.

When playing the games make sure you stress the first sound in the word to make it easier to hear e.g. ‘sssss sand’ or ‘p p p pie’.

Activities

Play I spy, with objects beginning with child’s tricky sound.

Sort words by the first sound. Give child some pictures of words starting with different sounds. Ask child to put pictures into piles of words that start with the same sound e.g. teddy and tie, snake and sand.

Make a scrapbook with your child. Use pictures beginning with your child’s tricky sound e.g. if your child struggles with ‘s’ stick in pictures of snakes, sea, spiders etc. Talk about the pictures with your child.

Hints and tips

Sound awareness skills help your child to hear how a word is put together. Your child needs to learn that words are made up of smaller parts and individual sounds before they can change their speech. These games will help them to practise this.

When to do them

Try to spend 5-10 minutes everyday
Practise them little and often
Do them during play, bath time, meal times or when out walking
Try to keep background noise down, e.g. turn off the telly.

Make the games fun as your child will be more likely to join in and learn.

These are listening games. The aim is for your child to hear lots of examples of how the words sound. Don’t expect your child to say them correctly.

Counting Beats

Before your child can change the way they say a word, your child needs to be able to listen for the smaller parts. A good way to do this is to listen for beats in words e.g. ba-by = 2 beats; el-e-phant = 3 beats.

Clapping beats

Say each word slowly, clapping each part or beat as you go. Encourage your child to have a go too. If they find this difficult try pointing to bricks for each beat.

Start with two or three beat words, as these are the easiest. Below are some examples or you could cut out pictures from a magazine.