- chart paper
- marker
MA Standards:
Foundational Skills/RF.PK.MA.2: With guidance and support, demonstrate understanding of spoken words, syllables, and sounds (phonemes).
Foundational Skills/RF.PK.MA.2.c: Identify the initial sound of a spoken word and, with guidance and support, generate several other words that have the same initial sound.
Head Start Outcomes:
Language Development/Receptive Language: Attends to language during conversations, songs, stories, or other learning experiences.
Literacy Knowledge/Phonological Awareness: Identifies and discriminates between sounds and phonemes in language, such as attention to beginning and ending sounds of words and recognition that different words begin or end with the same sound.
PreK Learning Guidelines:
English Language Arts/Reading and Literature 8: Listen to, identify, and manipulate language sounds to develop auditory discrimination and phonemic awareness.
Word Play: Riddles (/s/)
© Commonwealth of Massachusetts, Department of Early Education and Care (Jennifer Waddell photographer). All rights reserved.
ELA Focus Skills: Phonological Awareness, Speaking and Listening, Vocabulary
Write on chart paper a list of words that begin with the letter sound /s/, such as seed, soil, sun, and sunlight.
- Read each word aloud, and have children repeat the words.
- Then use several of the words to make up riddles for children to solve.
- Demonstrate by having children listen to this riddle. Say, “You plant things in me. I am brown. I am found on the ground. What am I?” As children respond (soil), circle that word on the chart.
Continue telling riddles for other words until all words are circled. For example, say,
- You plant me in the soil. I sprout. Then I grow taller. What am I? (seed)
- I am bright and warm. I am up in the sky. I come out during the day. I help plants grow. What am I? (sun)
- I am warm. Plants need me to grow. I come from the sun. What am I? (sunlight)
Adaptation: If very young children have trouble with the riddles, do each clue individually with them until they understand what the clue is referring to.
Adaptation: In groups with varying ages, you may wish to challenge older children to think of more /s/ words and create their own riddles.
Educator Tip: Guided and independent letter, sound, and word practice continues to take place in center activities. It is helpful to set up the literacy center immediately after the direct instruction and repeat instruction before children work in the literacy center identifying letters.