Phonological Awareness

Children who know more about nursery rhymes at age 3 are more highly developed in general phonological awareness at age 4 and in phonemic awareness at age 6.


What is Phonological Awareness?

The ability to hear and play with the smaller sounds in words. Recognizing that words are made of smaller sounds leads to reading success.

Early experience with nursery rhymes can help children begin to notice and think about the sounds in words.

Provide activities that increase children’s awareness of the sounds in language. These activities include playing games and listening to stories, poems and songs that involve:

Rhyme
Identifying words that end with the same sound (e.g., Jack and Jill went up the hill);

Alliteration
Recognizing when several words begin with the same sound (e.g., Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers);

Sound matching
Deciding which of several words begin with a specific sound (e.g., show a child pictures of a bird, a dog, and a cat and ask which one starts with the /d/ sound).

Come back tomorrow to see the order in which these smaller tasks develop!