Sound Games

In the Keys of the World language album, Sound Games, learning to identify beginning, then middle, then ending sounds, is done fairly early on.

Initially you start with different objects, and play a game similar to I-Spy, and the child gets to start to learn to hear the initial sounds. Initial sounds are then looked at through pictures. 

We started off with the objects game (with a little 'help' from Bear, as you can see!)

However, Addie was actually finding it very different to grasp the concept of beginning sounds at all. The only two she could recognise, and only with her name and Jay's name, were 'c' and 'j'... 

I have been looking at other Montessori blogs, and I actually decided that for Addie, she needed repetition of each sound to start recognising it, so the sound games are almost a little too advanced for her at the moment. 

Following what some other Montessori homeschoolers do, we ordered Alphatales:

These are American English, but they have been working so well, and Addie loves them! We do one new one each day, and try to do something related to it. (We are doing 'm' on Monday)... 

Here was our 'b' experience:

BUBBLES!

 

We then went and looked at some of the objects I had tried earlier in the day and we found these:

bucket, balloon, bauble and.... yep... block! 

I was confused when she chose the cube from the Pink Tower, but when we were looking at it, she called it a 'block'... I hadn't even thought of that, but it is a great example of something Jessica says - firstly, you do not have to go out and buy these objects, you can find them around your house. Secondly, one object can be several sounds. The 'cube', can be a 'block' or also 'pink', for example. 

So we are about a third of the way through the alphabet, but also adding other sounds (sh, ch, qu, etc), which is amazing and so logical (in my training, these sounds would not be covered until a child was reading CVC (consonant, vowel, consonant) or CVCC/CCVCC/CCVC words! 

It makes so much more sense to include all sounds at this stage, because we as adults are able to distinguish between different sounds, but for a child, why should we not teach them the sound for 'i' (as in I did this), or 'ea' as in 'eat', or o-e, as in 'phone' - all of the words they know and sounds they are hearing at this age as well as 'a' as in 'cat', or 'i' as in 'pig'...

We also play I-Spy a lot, and I can really see her beginning to actually get this!

More to follow soon!