• Draw your child's attention to the component sounds of his/her language with songs, poems an shared readings of stories.
• Read and reread stories that play with language (books with rhymes).
• Play oral word games that require mental manipulation of letter sounds - delete the /c/ from cat, add /g/ to ate, substitute /m/ for /t/ in Tommy.
• Create word families.  Choose a word which lends itself to a rhyming pattern.  Say a list of rhyming words - hill, pill, still, mill.

• Place magnetic letters on the refrigerator for your child to practice letter names and sounds, form words and/or create messages.
• Draw your child's attention to letters and words in his/her environment (signs, cereal boxes, toy boxes, menus, etc.).
• Trace letters in or on multisensory surfaces - like cloth, sand or shaving cream.  Practice sounds in conjunction with letter formation.
• Construct letters using various materials, such as macaroni, clay or pipe cleaners.

Connecting Phonics to Literature

Using your child's literature selection...

• Look for words that have a specific phonetic sound, (words beginning with the consonant sound /b/ or a vowel /l/ combination sound /ai/.  Have your child generate additional words with the same phonetic sound.
• Look for words with similar suffixes, prefixes and syllable patterns.
• Include rhymes, chants, tongue twisters and songs in your child's reading selections.
• Read to your child regularly.  This enriches his/her mind with the sounds of the English language.

Phonetic Strategies During Reading

• Give your child sufficient time to decode unfamiliar words.  Guide them to look at initial and final consonant sounds.  Provide suggestions for decoding the vowel sounds (try the short sound, try the long sound).
• Allow time for your child to self-correct, go back and reread mispronounced words.
• Break an unfamiliar word into syllables so that your child can focus on one syllable at a time.   Reread the word blending the syllables together.
• Expect your child to use phonics strategies at the appropriate level of ability.
• Note that there are phonetically irregular words that do not follow conventional pronunciations.  Therefore, these words must be practiced, memorized and/or recognized with respect to the context of the sentence.