Visit the Library

Here's another tip to help kids grow their love of reading. Visit the public library, and let your child get his or her very own library card. The librarians in the Children's Room at the Mill Valley Library know just how to make this a special event. Your child will go home with a new library card and a new book! Plus he or she will get their picture taken for a personalized bookmark. Click here for some more information from the Mill Valley Library. Once your child has a new library card, put it to good use and visit the Children's Room often!

More Phonemic Awareness

Let's talk some more about phonemic awareness, okay? Today I'd like to focus on phoneme isolation -- the ability to single out just the beginning, middle or ending phonemes or sounds in a word. If your child is making good progress with rhyming and counting syllables, it's probably time to move on to phoneme isolation. Start by working with beginning sounds. Then move on to working with ending sounds, and lastly focus on those tricky middle sounds. The activities below are explained with beginning sounds -- just substitute different words and sounds in order to focus on middle and ending sounds. Mix it up and try these activities with lots of different sounds, focusing first on consonants and short vowels.

1. Say a word. Ask your child to tell you the beginning sound of your word. "What's the beginning sound of ball?"

2. Play "I Spy" with pictures in books or objects around your house. Say "I spy with my little eye something that starts with /s/." Ask your child to guess the object that starts with /s/.

3. Play "Which word doesn't match?" Say three words, two of which have the same beginning sound. For example: sun, sock, map. Ask your child which word begins with a different sound?

4. Make a sound collage. Have your child cut out pictures of objects that begin with a certain phoneme. Glue the pictures onto paper to make a collage. Draw some additional pictures on your collage for a mixed-media effect.

Okay? Go have some fun with word play!

World Book

Hi again! I wanted to let you know about a website subscription that is available to you through the Edna Maguire Library: The World Book Encyclopedia Online. It has a section for early learning that has some good reading material and activities. You can listen to nursery rhymes, stories and sing-alongs. Plus there are lots of activities to support letter recognition, number recognition and phonemic awareness.

Click here to go to the Edna Maguire Library website and look for the section "Online References." Click on the "World Book Encyclopedia Online" link. You'll need a user name and a password which I'll send to you in a separate email. After logging in with Edna's user name, click the "Early World of Learning" button towards the bottom of the page. Check it out and let me know what you think.

Please let me know if you need the user name and password. I can always send another email or send a note home with your child.

Phonemic Awareness

I'm back - this time to talk about phonemic awareness, a skill that your kindergarteners have been developing in their classrooms. So, what in the world is phonemic awareness? It is the ability to identify, hear, and work with the smallest units of sound known as phonemes. For example, the ability to recognize rhyming words; to detect syllables; to blend individual phonemes into a word; to identify beginning, middle and ending sounds of a word; to count the number of phonemes in a word; to segment a word into its individual phonemes; to substitute phonemes in a word and to omit phonemes in a word. It is essential in learning to read because letters represent sounds or phonemes, and it is a strong predictor of reading success.

So you may now be wondering how you can help your children develop their phonemic awareness. Let's start with rhyming and detecting syllables. Here are some activities, most of which can be done just about anytime and just about anywhere.

1. Say a word and ask your child to think of rhyming words. Say, "ball" and help your child come up with words like small, wall, hall, etc.

2. Read rhyming books. Just think of all of those classic Dr. Seuss books! After you read, go through the book together to find rhyming words.

3. Sing or say nursery rhymes. At the end of each nursery rhyme, ask your child to identity the rhyming words.

4. Say a word, and ask your child to repeat it and clap out the syllables. How many syllables does each word have? Be sure to mix it up and use some one syllable words and some multi-syllable words.