Rhythm and Rhyme Programme

1. Remodelling

2. Not understanding what your child says

3. Focusing on what your child is saying

4. Using context

5. Talking about speech sounds

Syllable clapping is a really useful activity for learning speech sounds.

It helps your child understand how sounds go together in chunks which make up words. This ability to ‘chunk’ words is really important for learning new words and for literacy development (i.e. reading and writing).

Try to repeat syllable clapping activities every day with your child. You and your child can clap the syllables or bang on a drum/pan. 

If your child finds it difficult to clap words accurately, start with just two syllable words. When they have mastered clapping two syllable words, move on to three syllable words. Work through the following stages:

1.  Two syllable word like ‘postman’ ‘greenhouse’ ‘tractor’ ‘apple’ ‘monkey’ 
2. Three syllable words like ‘elephant’ ‘banana’ ‘spiderman’ ‘broccoli’  
3. One syllable words like “ball” “spoon”

6. Syllable clapping

Listening to different sounds – this activity will help your child to listen to and identify different sounds.

7. Listening to different sounds

These activities will introduce some of the concepts we may use to talk about different sounds including long and short, front and back, loud and quiet.

For example ‘d’ is a loud sound, ‘t’ is a quiet sound
‘sss’ is a long sound, ‘d’ is a short sound
‘t’ is a front sound, ‘k’ is a back sound

8. Loud and quiet

9. Long and short

10. Front and back

Here are some of the sounds we might ask you to work on.

The Cued Articulation hand gesture is used alongside the sound to give your child more information about where and how the sound is made (i.e. if it is at the front or back of the mouth, if it is a loud or quiet sound and if it is a long or a short sound)

11. Introducing speech sounds

Stage 1 – Listening at a single sound level

Lay out the consonant sound pictures. The adult says the sound e.g. ‘p’, and the child needs to show you what they can hear.

Use the Cued Articulation hand gesture to help your child at first. Eventually stop doing the gesture and see if they can just rely on listening to the sound.

12. Stage 1 listening – Skittles

13. Stage 1 listening – Posting game

Checklist

My child can point to the sound cards when I make the sound:

Stage 2 – Listening to sounds in words

Lay out the consonant sound pictures. The adult says a word e.g. ‘pot’, and the child needs to show you what sound they can hear at the start or end of the word.

Use the Cued Articulation hand gesture to help your child at first. Eventually stop doing the gesture and see if they can just rely on listening to the word.

14. Listening to sounds at the start of words

15.  Listening to sounds at the end of words

Stage 1 – saying the sound on it’s own

16. Stage 1 –  Fishing game

Stage 2 – saying vowel sounds

Lots of children can say the vowel sounds easily. Don’t spend too long at this level. It is just to ensure your child is aware of what the pictures are, before moving onto stage 3.

Move onto stage 3 when your child is familiar with the new vowel pictures.

17. Stage 2 – Introducing vowel sounds 

Stage 3 – practice saying the sound before or after a vowel sound

Only move onto stage 3 when your child is able to say the sound easily on its own.

18. Stage 3 – Train game

19. Stage 3 – Jigsaw game

You will need to play the listening and production games at the right stage many times to help your child learn the sounds.

One way to keep it fun is to change the game you are using, whilst still keeping the purpose of the activity the same.

Here are some more ideas for games you can adapt for listening or production to the different stages.

Keep activities short and fun – it is better to keep practice short (10-15 minutes), and repeat it lots throughout the week, rather than doing one longer session.

Listening

Stepping stones:

• lay out some the sound pictures on the floor
• say a sound
• can your child jump on the correct sound picture?

Beanbags:

• lay out the sound pictures
• say a sound
• can your child throw a beanbag onto the correct sound picture?

Cars/favourite characters:

• lay out the sound pictures
• say a sound
• can your child make their teddy jump or car drive to the correct sound picture?

Other games e.g. board games, monkey tree game, ker-plunk, Pop-up pirate, jigsaw, Mr Potato Head:

• before each turn, can your child identify which sound you said by pointing to the correct picture

Production

Hide and seek:

• hide sounds/word pictures around the room
• each time your child finds a sound picture, ask them to say the sound

Stepping stones:

• lay out the sound pictures on the floor
• your child must jump across the stepping stones, saying each sound as they jump onto it

Beanbags:

• lay out the sound pictures on the floor
• your child must throw a beanbag onto a sound and have a go at saying it

Other games e.g. board games, monkey tree game, ker-plunk, Pop-up pirate, jigsaw, Mr Potato Head:

• before each turn, can your child say the target sound?