Your Child Will Learn
To identify the beginning, middle, and end sounds of spoken words with help from adults.
Here’s What to Do
- Plan an outing in your community, like a visit to the park, a pond, or shopping center.
- Look around and identify an object whose name is a simple one-syllable word.
- Play “I Spy,” giving your child a hint about the beginning, middle, or end sound of a word. See if your child can guess it. Celebrate when they get it right!
- Repeat with other words around you.
Put PEER Into Action
PAUSE
- Find an environment where you and your child can sit outdoors, in a settled place somewhere in your community free from distraction
ENGAGE
- If the word is “bus,” you could say “I spy something that…”
- Starts with ‘buh’
- Has the “uh” sound in the middle
- Ends with “ssss”
- Ask your child “what letters can we put together to make one sound”?
ENCOURAGE
- Hearing the middle sound will be the hardest. If your child is having a hard time hearing middle sounds, stick to beginning and ending sounds.
- Give your child clues like: “The word I’m thinking of that ends in ‘guh’ goes ‘woof woof.’”
REFLECT
- Is your child able to identify beginning, middle, and ending sounds in words?
Not Quite Ready
Play the game with beginning sounds of words.
Ready for More
Give your child a three letter consonant-vowel-consonant word (like ‘cat,’ ‘cup,’ ‘dig’) and ask them to try to say the beginning, middle, and ending sound of the word.
As Your Child Masters This Skill
They will be able to identify the beginning, middle, and ending sounds of spoken words with help from adults.
Time to Complete
10-15 minutes
Materials Needed
None