Children Chatter Matters 

1. As you read a story with your child, encourage your child to count the number of words in a sentence. Use your fingers to help. For example, ‘How many words can you hear in this sentence?’ She loves chocolate biscuits (has 4 words).

For older kids, say a sentence out of their reader/book and see if you can reorder the words to make new sentences. For example, the sentence “I can run fast and swim far” can be reordered to make: “I can run far and swim fast” or “can I run fast and swim far?

Here are some sentences to start you off (remember to choose sentences from your child’s book/reader):

a. Mike has a red lolly and Sarah has a blue ball.

b. She went to the shops after she went to the pool.

c. Please move quickly to the door.

d. Lucy painted a picture of Mike while he rode his bike.

2. As you read with your child, practice breaking words up into syllables (beats in a word). For example, chick-en (chicken) has two syllables and el-e-phant (elephant) has 3 syllables. Clapping out the word into syllables can help. Talk about how longer words have more syllables.

Ask your child to think of the longest words they know. Demonstrate the length by clapping out the beats or syllables – caterpillar (cat-er-pill-ar has 4 claps), encyclopedia (en-cy-clo-pe-di-a has 6 claps).