FUN? YEP! LEARNING? YOU BET!

The 'Big Six' are the critical skills required to become a good reader. While phonics is best learned in a structured classroom program, and fluency and comprehension follow after, each of oral language, vocabulary and phonological awareness start forming from a very young age. Guess what? These skills can be practised in the home from day dot.

Bonus - you don't need a worksheet or app to do it!

ENTER SOUND SLAM
Purposefully designed to build phonological awareness (the ability to recognise that words are made up of smaller sounds), thse cards set the stage for learning to read. Memory focuses on rhyming, I Spy includes initial sounds and Sound Slam incorporates syllable recognition too. In What's this Word, players segment words and blend sounds - perfect (and oh so important) for developing spellers and readers!

Happy Learning + Playing!

WHY PLAY:

1. Purposefully designed to build phonological awareness (the ability to recognise that words are made up of smaller sounds), Sound Slam sets the stage for learning to read. Players practice rhyming, recognising initial sounds and syllable recognition.
2. Although phonological awareness is front and centre, oral language, the back and forth of human chitchat and communication, another critical pre reading skill (one you start developing as a teeny tiny baby), is built into the game.
3. With game adaptions (see below) players can develop their vocabulary too.
4. Last but not least, what's even more important than pre-reading skills for school readiness? Yep. Emotional regulation, turn taking and attention focus. Right down to practicing the art of losing, we've got you covered! Slam on!

AIM: The first player with no cards left wins! This is achieved by matching your cards to the picture card in the middle.

SET UP: Use the entire deck or one set of cards (e.g. cards with yellow Sound Slam logos) for a faster, modified game.

FIRST TIME PLAYER: If playing for the first time, play an open hand and keep the five KEY cards handy for official picture card reference. There's a lot of cognitive load (amazing!) for younger players so consider only matching background colours and rhyme (omit starting sounds) until players are feeling confident.

HOW TO PLAY:

1. Deal five cards to each player. Place the rest as a stack in the middle with pictures down.
2. Flip the top card over to start the game pile.
3. On each turn, based on the picture on top of the game pile players get rid of EITHER:
   
   One card with the same coloured background (pink, yellow, blue, green)
   
   One or more cards that rhyme
   
   One or more cards with the same initial sound (sound not letter, SHower and Sock start with different sounds)
   
   One SLAMMER. You lucky duck! A SLAMMER helps you get ahead of other players. 'Clap out' the number of syllables in the picture. This is how many cards your opponents must pick up. For instance, if the SLAMMER is 'umbrella', clap out three syllables. Now choose who picks up three cards. It can be one person picking up all three, or spread the three cards out over multiple players. The next person can play any card or cards to resume the game.
   
4. When a player can't go, they pick up a card from the stack. Ohno! Their turn ends there.
5. If the stack runs out, keep the top card in play but shuffle the rest to create a new stack.
6. The first player to get rid of all of their cards wins! (We like to yell 'Sound Slam' when we win just to really drive home the point).

ADAPT IT
Adapt Sound Slam based on player ability or to hone in on a specific skill. For example:

1. Only match background colours and rhyme for developing players
2. Omit rhyme and background colours and only play with initial sounds
3. Focus on expanding oral language and vocabulary over rhyme by ignoring the KEY. In this modified version, players can choose their own word for a card as they play it (e.g. play the whale card as "mammal" or the guitar card as "instrument")
4. Include everyone! While you might play the standard rules for younger players, ask a little more from your advanced primary school readers to take their vocabulary further. Every time they play a card ask them to use three different words to describe that picture (e.g. play the chair and describe it as a chair, seat, resting place).
5. Remember you always have the option to refer to the coloured logos on the back of the cards and play with one or all three packs.

Happy Learning + Playing!

WHY PLAY? This game focuses one of the more advanced but utterly critical subskills, phonemic awareness (which falls under the ubmrella term Phonological Awareness but is so important it gets its own game). Phonemic awareness is the ability to identify the smallest unit of sound in a word and segment (break apart like an orange segment) and blend (put it back together like a smoothie) words into their individual sounds.

A SPECIAL NOTE: When they start to learn phonics at primary school, we promise you will be utterly thankful for every second you have spent playing this game!

WHO: More progressed players. 1 Quizmaster and 1-3 Players

AIM: the Quizmaster holds a stack of cards so that the players cannot see the pictures.

HOW TO PLAY: The Quizmaster uses a card as a prompt to segment a word. Ask players, "What's this word?" and vocally break the word in single sounds. For instance, "c/ oa/ t" OR "f/ r/ o/ g". The first player to identify the word corretly "coat" OR "frog", wins a point and holds the card to keep score.

ADAPT IT: As players learn and advance, let them try being quizmaster too!

WHY PLAY: Practice rhyming, a subskill of Phonological Awareness.

WHO: 1 - 4 players

AIM: Collect cards by correctly finding rhyming pairs.

SET UP: Use one set of cards (e.g. cards with green Sound Slam logos, minus the SLAMMERS). Place the cards in a grid. The cards can be picture up for beginner players or picture down for a more challenging game.

HOW TO PLAY: On your turn, select two cards from anywhere on the grid. If you find a pair that rhyme, you get to keep those cards! The person with the most cards at the end wins.

WHY PLAY: Ask your child to setup at the breakfast bench and practice Phonological Awareness (this time rhyme and initial sound recognition) while you wait for the toaster.

WHO: 2-3 players.

AIM: Identify cards using their initial sound or rhyming pattern.

SET UP: Lay out one set of cards (e.g. cards with blue Sound Slam logo) with the pictures facing up.

HOW TO PLAY: A player starts, "I spy with my little eye something beginning with the sound*" based on one of the pictures. For instance, "the sound /h/". The player who identifies the intended card, "hat" gets to keep that card. It is their turn next. *Keep in mind that this game is about starting sounds, not starting letters. CHair and Car start with different sounds.

ADAPT IT: This game can also be played with rhyming words 'I spy with my little eye, something that rhymes with" OR for advanced players, play with middle and ending sounds, "I spy with my little eye something ending with the sound /oo/... "Yes - Kangaroo!".

SPECIAL NOTE: Despite all the words out there in our wonderful language every words can be broken down into some combination of only 44 sounds. The cards with the yellow backgrounds all have different starting sounds, perfect for a game of Ispy!

(The research is clear that a structured synthetic phonics program is the best way to learn to read and write so this activity is just for the teachers to use in the classroom).

All the cards with blue backs are consonant vowel consonant (CVC) words, perfect for your beginner writers to practice!