Listening

Yesterday I attended a pre-k workshop all day. One of the presentations was all about teaching listening skills. Although hearing is a natural process that develops, listening is a learned behavior involving mental processes. It makes total sense right? But how much time do we spend teaching our children how to listen? I think I can recall maybe two times I've played listening games with my children to help them with this. I also learned that listening is the first step in the phonological awareness continuum. It goes likes this:

Listening - Rhyming - Alliteration - Sentence Segmentation - Syllable Blending and Segmenting - Onset/Rime Blending and Segmenting - Phoneme Blending, Segmenting, and Manipulation.

Each skill builds upon the prior skill and prepares children to read and write.

Modeling: To teach listening, one must model it, so first take time to really listen to your children. Try listening to your child for five minutes. That can seem like a really long time when you have a million things to do, but pay attention to what listening skills you are teaching through your actions.

Listening Games: Listening is developed through practice, so here are some games you can play with your kids no matter what their age.

• Books on cd: Provide books on cd with the book for your child to listen to. Children have to listen for directions to know when to turn the page. This also helps teach book knowledge.
• Egg Shake: Gather those old plastic Easter eggs and fill them with a variety of materials. Make sure you have two of each material, so the children can match the eggs by shaking them and listening to the sound each makes. Some suggested materials include dried rice, beans, and peas, pom poms, safety pins, paper clips, and buttons. Begin with just three pairs for the children to match and add more to increase the challenge.
  
• Egg timer: Set a ticking egg timer and hide it in a room. Have your child walk around the room listening for it to find it. As their listening skills improve hide the timer in an unknown room and send your child listening for it.
• Listen to food: Sort a variety of snacks by the sound they make. Label some crunchy and not crunchy. have your child bite into the foods to figure it out.
• Play Simon Says.
• Play Red Light Green Light.
• Play Mother May I.
• Read a book: Choose a book and some sound effects that your child can make when a word is repeated. For example in Goldie Locks and the Three Bears, your child could growl each time you read the word bear and say "Oh my!" each time you read Goldie Locks. Read the book and instruct your child to listen for the words.