Teach a wide variety of nursery rhymes, providing a chance for children to learn about the matching endings of rhyming words.
Have children make up their own rhymes for common sounds. As they do this, allow them to play with language and make up nonsense words – so long as they rhyme, they count.
Read aloud a children’s book written in rhyme. Stop occasionally before a rhyming word to see if the children can guess the word and finish the sentence.
Have children clap for each syllable as they speak aloud to develop syllabic awareness. Begin with their own names. Go round the circle and discuss how many children have first names with one, two or three syllables.
Work again with familiar nursery rhymes, clapping out the syllabic rhythm in a well-known song.
Explain that syllables are like the building blocks of words. Use real blocks as a visual aid. Ask the children to show with their blocks how many syllables a given word has.
Practice alliteration is with tongue twisters, such as "Peter Piper" or "She Sells Sea Shells."
Ask the children to make up short tongue twisters of their own, using words that begin the same way. Again, they could start with their own names to make it more fun.
Read aloud from a children's book and ask the children to raise their hands when they hear two words together that start with the same sound.
Work with word families to introduce phonics. Have the children list all the one-syllable words they can think of in the –at family; cat, sat, mat, bat, etc.
Allow the children to create their own word family by using magnetic letters. Put a big A and T on the board and then provide a variety of starting letters that work in the family.
Allow the children to take turns placing a starting letter on the AT, and get them to read the result.