Help your pre-school child identify syllables by reading aloud. Children's books often use poetry that rhymes and has rhythm, or alliteration -- repeating vowels and consonants like the letter a in air, art and all or f in far, few, fair -- and words that sound like their meaning, like bees buzzing. Sing with your child in a sing-song voice is another exercise that emphasizes where the syllables are and prepares them to learn about syllables in school.
Have students repeat words of different lengths. Teachers may pass out mirrors or pair children to watch each other then ask the individual children to count the times he or the other child opened and closed his mouth. Explain to them that this is way to determine the number of syllables in a word, and indicate that that a vowel causes the mouth to open and each syllable is limited to one.
Instruct the students about the six most common syllable spelling patterns. These include closed syllables ending in a consonant, open syllables ending in a vowel and syllables controlled by r, such as bird or terrible, and which affect the pronunciation of the preceding vowel. They also include syllables containing a silent e and syllables containing le and usually placed at the end of the word, such as riddle. Vowel digraphs such as ai, ay, ea, ee, oa, ow, oo, oi, oy, ou, ie and ei appear in the same syllable, such as tower, router or freighter.
List the number of vowels in a word, subtracting silent vowels like the final e in elite and counting a diphthong -- two vowels written together that make one sound like ea in meat -- as only one vowel. The number of syllables is equal to the number of vowels. Teach the children to divide the number of syllables between double consonants such as the Ms in commitment, before the consonant before an le syllable such as tumble and a single consonant such as in the word open. Also divide compound words counting the suffix or prefix as a separate syllable, such as teacher, banker, hopeful or tearful.
Write words out on a chalkboard syllable by syllable, then have the children say the word and explain why they pronounced each syllable the way they did. Divide words, writing each syllable on a note card, jumbling the cards and asking the students to rearrange the cards so that the syllables appear in proper order. Have students mark multi-syllabic words on handouts, drawing an arc under the group of words that comprise a syllable. Also work one-on-one with students in speed drills, having them say each syllable as fast as they can.