Activities to Foster Early Literacy

Helping children to boost their vocabulary, language and reading skill doesn’t have to difficult; most kids want to be around and learn from their caregivers, especially if it’s fun. Here are some activities to encourage those early literacy skills.

Engage children in rhyming activities

-Rhyming helps children begin to recognize patterns in spoken words; finding similarities in words boosts their confidence in communicating with others

-Rhyme Power

1. Let’s pretend you are a superhero! What is your superpower?
2. Activate your superpower by saying a rhyme. Make one up — like “Never last, super fast!” or “Fly pie, in the sky!.”
What is your rhyme?
3. When I need you to rescue me, say your rhyme to turn on your superpower.

-Color Rhyme

1. Let’s think of words that rhyme with different colors. I will go first. What rhymes with blue? Shoe. Can you think of
3 other words that rhyme with blue?
2. Let’s try red. What rhymes? Let’s think of more colors and words that rhyme with them.

-Nursery Rhymes

1. I’ll sit you on my knees, facing me, and bounce you to the rhythm of my favorite nursery rhymes.
2. Hey, diddle, diddle, The cat and the fiddle, The cow jumped over the moon; The little dog laughed To see such
sport, And the dish ran away with the spoon!
3. Let’s try another nursery rhyme! We can also rock together and I’ll help you to clap your hands to the rhythm of
the rhyme!

Playing with letters and sounds

Letters and sounds can be tricky; help your child learn about how letters can have several different sounds.

-Namely

1. Write your name and the child’s name. Say each letter out loud as you write.
2. Do you have any of the same letters in your names?
3. How many letters are in each name? Which name is longer? Shorter?

-Letter Portrait

1. Who is in our family? Let’s write the first letter of each of their names.
2. Let’s turn one letter into the person it stands for by adding a face, arms, legs, and what else?
3. Let’s transform all of the letters into the people they represent and create a family portrait.

-Look for letters

1. Let’s have a letter hunt!
2. Let’s look for the first letter in Your child. I’ll write it so that you can see what the letter looks like.
3. Let’s look on the labels for our letter. How many can we find?

And of course: Reading to your child 

You can never read too much to your children. Keep the engaged by asking them questions about the pictures, letters

All activities provided by the Sparkler app. For more activities, tips and to screen your children using the Ages and Stages Questionnaire download the free Sparkler app. Use code HMGK when creating an account! On Apple and Android