Recommended Age: 4-5 years
Level of Parent Involvement: Medium
Prerequisites
- The child must have a repertoire of at least 8-10 Sandpaper letters
- The child must have had experience in phonetic word building using the moveable alphabet
Materials
- Strips of paper
- A writing pencil
- A tray
Preparation
- Cut up some short strips of paper
Steps
- Invite the child telling them you want to play a game and they will need to bring the writing tray
- Sit to the right of the child
- Modelling beautiful handwriting (Victorian cursive if possible), write a phonetic label for the child to read, for example ‘tap’
- Encourage the child to read the label, assisting where necessary encouraging the child to sound out the word, faster each time until they hear the sounds blend into the word
- When the child identifies the word encourage them to place the label with the corresponding item in the house
- Repeat as above for other phonetic words which the child can find in the home (mug, jug, mat, cup, pot, hat, pan etc)
- When finished invite the child to collect the labels
Variations
- Phonetic commands (after the child has memorized puzzle words a, I, and, the etc)
For example “pat a cat”, “tap the mat”, “lift a jug”
