My child is a new entrant. She is just beginning to learn the letter sounds. Although she is gradually learning the letters and their sounds from her alphabet cards, when we play eye spy she does not seem to be able to work out the first sound of a word. What should I do to help her with this?

Hi Jennifer,

I would not panic just yet, if she is a new entrant it is likely she will not have the skills yet distinguish sounds at the beginning of words. Asking a young child to match a letter to a sound is not the same as asking them to distinguish a sound at the beginning of a word. Distinguishing a sound at the beginning of a word is a much harder task for a child that is only just developing letter sound knowledge.

I would just concentrate on the letters she is learning at school and practice matching the sounds to individual letters for now. If she has no obvious speech, language or literacy delay, you do not need to push her too hard, she should develop these skills naturally through her school work.

If you really want to work on words, I would get some pictures with simple words written underneath e.g. cat, bus, dog, tap etc, and some letters that match the sounds at the beginning of your words. Ask your daughter to look at the picture and the written word, and match them to the letter/sound at the beginning of the word. This way she can see the word, hear the word, say the word, and see the picture, and then match the individual letter to the letter at the beginning of the word. This should not be a difficult task if she has some letter sound knowledge and she is getting lots of information about the written letter, the written word, and the spoken and auditory sounds. Over time she will link all this knowledge together to help her read, write and spell.

Regards icommunicate webteam

Thank you for the advise. Since then she is beginning to be able to recognise the letter sounds more easily now. She tells me that in her mind she associates different colours with different letters of the alphabet, so for example 'a' is red, 'b' is green and 'c' is pink. Is this unusual? Is there anyway I can use this to make it easier for her when she is learning the letter sounds?

Hi Jennifer,

I think using letters and colours is okay, but if she comes across a letter written in a different colour it may confuse her. I sometimes use a little hand signal for each letter/sound, I find that gives children an extra cue. One such system is Cued Articulation by Jane Passey.

Hope that helps.
Cheers Sarah