Phonological Awareness Activities for Infants
Help your infant distinguish sounds with easy activities you both will enjoy together. Phonological awareness activities increase your infant's ability to recognize the sound structure of spoken words and individual sounds. Phonemic awareness is an important concept for young children that will help them as they begin speaking, reading and spelling. Awareness begins from early infancy and can be facilitated through everyday activities like a walk through the park, playing games and listening to music.
Other People Are Reading
-
Speaking
-
Test the phonological awareness of your infant while you take him for a walk. Walk through the park and listen to the sounds of birds, animals, cars driving by and other infants. Talk aloud to your baby and discuss these sounds. Point out what each sound is as you hear it to help your baby distinguish between the various sounds. This simple test builds unconscious awareness of differing sounds for infants from birth to 18 months old.
Listening
-
Set up a recording device and record yourself singing your favorite song for your infant. Play it back to her and see if she recognizes your voice or the sound based on her reactions of smiling or laughing, for example. You may also record baby noises and play them back to her. She will likely recognize the noises as they are similar to the ones she makes and echo them back to you. Play a CD of various sounds, such as rain, ocean waves or train tracks. The idea is to play common sounds your infant might hear every day. Test phonological awareness with these activities for children up to 18 months.
-
Games
-
Play an amusing phonological awareness game with your 12- to 18-month year old child. Introduce a game of musical hide and seek by taking the baby's favorite musical toy and hiding it somewhere in the room. Let your child find it by crawling to the sound of the music. Help your infant learn the sounds an animal makes using his stuffed animal toys. Teach him a lion's growl, a cat's meow and a cow's moo by correlating each sound with the plush animal. Your child will then begin to connect each sound with the animal on his own.
Music
-
At 18 months your infant likely enjoys coloring. Introduce to your infant musical coloring by playing classical music and letting her color to the beat of the music. After a while, she may find favorite songs of her own to which she likes to color. Play classical music for your infant as he falls asleep at night. Before he falls asleep he will unconsciously be recognizing high and low sounds, melodies, and instrumentals within the music. Play silly songs that teach different sounds and sing them together, such as "Old MacDonald Had a Farm."
-
References
- Photo Credit Baby feet image by Platinum Pictures from Fotolia.com
