This breaks up words into sections and shows their parts. SyllablesĬounting the number of syllables in words is another important skill to work on. Rhyming can be fun and silly, but it’s a great way for kids to practice hearing the sounds in words. You can read about other ways we practice rhyming here. It’s also a lot of fun! We love to play a game where we say a word and try to come up with as many words as we can to rhyme with it. It’s a phonemic awareness skill that help kids hear sounds within words. Rhyming is a very important skill for reading. This can be a tricky concept to understand, so have patience and keep working on it! 3. Then have them sort them by short vowel and long vowel sounds. For example, with the letter I, you can show pictures of ice, igloo, iguana, inch worm, island, and iron. It can get confusing to some, so it’s a great skill to work on! You can practice this with a picture sort, like you can find here. VowelsĪ good thing to work on is distinguishing the short and long sounds of each vowel. Playing games to match the uppercase letter to the lowercase letter is a fun way to practice this. They may start to catch on that capital letters are the first letter of each sentence. Go through books and point out capital letters. You can also look at your child’s name and explain how the first letter is capitalized, but the rest of the letters are lowercase. Uppercase and Lowercase Lettersĭoes your child know there are uppercase AND lowercase letters? If not, spend time helping the child recognize the differences. When you feel like your child is ready to move on from the alphabet, I suggest working on these 8 skills. It’s one thing for a child to know the alphabet letters in order, and another thing when all the letters are mixed around. One thing to be careful of is when you teach children the letter sounds, make sure you don’t add the sound ‘-uh’ to the end! For example, ‘d’ shouldn’t sound like ‘duh.’ 🙂 Have your child recite the letter name sound.

Mix up alphabet letters and point to one. To know if your child is ready to move on from the alphabet, you can do a quick assessment. Have you ever felt stuck on what to teach your child after the alphabet? Your child knows the letters and sounds, but what comes next? How do they go from the ABCs to reading? I get asked this question frequently, so today, I’m sharing 8 things to teach after your child knows the alphabet.

Talking alphabet alphabet phonics