Modelling (Recasting)

This is one of the best ways to develop a child's speech sound development. It involves repeating what your child says, but saying the sound or word correctly. For example, if your child says "I want a poon", you could reply "Oh you want a spoon, here's a red one. Now you can eat your cornflakes." This way, you don't draw attention to their mistake and make them feel bad for getting the wrong sound. Instead, you simply let them hear it said correctly.

Speech Sound Awareness for Young Children

Speech sound awareness, also known as phonological awareness, is a really important skill for children's speech sound development and reading. These activities will help your young child:

• Listen out for the sounds: Turn off the TV and radio and listen to the sounds you can hear in the house or garden, or while walking down the street. For example, a ticking clock, washing machine, dog barking or aeroplane.
• Play games that encourage waiting, turn-taking and listening. For example, saying "ready, steady, go" before popping a bubble, playing musical statues or squeak piggy squeak.
• Dance, clap, stamp your feet or bang a drum to the beat of a song.
• Sing nursery and action rhymes such as Wind the Bobbin Up or Wheels on the Bus, or make up your own simple songs. Sins the same songs over and over again.
• Read books with a repetitive rhyming pattern, for example We're Going on a Bear Hunt. Read the same ones again and again so your child gets to know them and can start joining in the story with you.
• Make up silly rhyming patterns. You could make up rhyming words with a pet's name or a toy. For example, Fred, bed, Ned, head or Riley, Miley, smiley.

Playing With Sounds

Playing with sounds is an important part of your child’s speech and language development. It allows your child to practise the movements used to produce the different speech sounds in words. You can encourage young children to experiment with making sounds by:

• Copying any attempts at sounds they make. Try to vary the sound by making it louder or quieter, or higher or lower pitched.
• Making silly sounds, such as blowing raspberries, popping your cheeks, smacking your lips, or rolling your tongue. Pause and see if your child will copy you.
• Listen and copy sounds you can hear around you, at home or outside, for example a phone ringing (ring ring), sirens (nee nor), cars (beep beep), door bells (ding dong), or animal sounds (woof woof, meeow, tweet tweet).
• Make sounds in everyday activities, for example say "mmm" when eating food, "whee" when going down a slide or "uh-oh" if you drop something.

Syllable Awareness (4+)

Words are made up of different numbers of beats, or syllables:

• ca-ter-pi-llar = 4
• ba-na-na = 3
• ta-ble = 2
• chair = 1

Syllable awareness starts with being able to copy a rhythm, such as dancing to a beat or clapping out a rhythm. Playing with musical instruments can help with this, for example copying beats on a drum.

Children often find it easier to talk about the claps or beats in a word rather than the syllables. For example, you could ask: "How many claps are in the word ba-na-na?"

You could also try: 

• Using children's names, toys and everyday objects and clap the syllables as you say the word. It may help to break the spoken word down, such as by saying "di-no-saur" rather than "dinosaur". Demonstrate plenty of examples before asking them to have a go. See if they can count the number of syllables in the word, for example E-llie has two claps, O-li-ver has three claps.
• Playing simple I spy games and focus on the syllables in the word. For example, "I spy the ta-ble, "I spy the com-pu-ter".
• Saying the whole word again after saying the individual syllables to help your child hear how the syllables blend together, for example you would say: "Ta-ble has two claps, table."

Rhyming Awareness (4+)

Using rhyming words is a good way to help your child recognise the sounds and patterns in words, which will help them when it comes to learning to read. You could try:

• Reading books with repetitive patterns, such as The Gruffalo.
• Playing pairs games - match rhyming pictures, or play an odd one out game, finding the picture that does not match, for example, bed, head, car. Remember, it is the rhyme you are matching, not the spelling of the word.
• Playing I Spy games - you could ask your child to find something in the room that rhymes with pear, or find something on their plate that rhymes with lips, or find a part of their body that rhymes with bed.
• Making up rhyming strings - these don't need to be real words, for example, Millie, filly, nilly, dilly.

Listening to Sounds at the Beginning of Words

For these activities, it is important to say the sound the letter makes, not the name of the letter, for example 'ffff' not 'ef'.

• Point out items that start with the same sound, for example ball, bear and bunny all start with the ‘b’ sound, carrots, crisps and coffee all start with a ‘c’ sound.
• Play simple I spy games during every day activities. For example: "I spy something on your plate that begins with f", "Let’s wash a part of your body beginning with h".
• Play pairs games with everyday objects or pictures and match the ones that start with same sound. Or play odd one out games - select a few objects that start with the same sound and one that doesn’t. For example bag, bear, ball and car. Name the items and see if your child can identify the odd one out. 
• Sound hunt – ask your child to find something in the room or garden that starts with a specific sound. For example, find something beginning with ch or m.