Alliteration for kids can turn into a very fun activity as you come across new tong twisters: your little ones will LOVE it! Help your children develop strong pre-reading skills through alliteration. Scroll to the end if you’re looking for fun alliteration examples for your children.
How can you teach Alliteration to your Kids?
Alliteration for kids can be taught in a large range of ways and methods, all using a few simple props. It’s a great tool to get kids excited about learning different sounds. From crafting sound stories to playing fun instructive games, you can easily help your children improve their phonetic abilities. It’s an instrument that all kids can benefit from to develop strong pre-reading skills. So if you’re struggling to find alliterative activities best suited for your little ones, you’ve come to the right place. Not only are these games amusing to play along with, but also easy enough to incorporate into your daily routine. So how do you teach alliteration for kids? Read along to explore our definitive guide to fun and interactive learning!
What is Alliteration?
Alliteration is a phrase or sentence that repeats the same initial sound in most or all of its words. This sound is usually a consonant and its repetition helps your kids distinguish phonetic attributes in the language. It can be an incredibly valuable and fun tool to help your children experiment with reiterating sounds.
In addition to that, you can also make up entertaining stories using a particular sound to further spark their curiosity. Or you can come up with a range of games using props and toys that start with the same sound. The goal is to engage your children’s senses and get them excited to partake in these fun and educational activities.
Why is Alliteration helpful?
Teaching alliteration to your kids can help them identify and pay attention to the different sounds in words. They can greatly benefit from this instructive tool to develop strong pre-reading skills. In this way, your kids will be able to detect and separate the varying pronunciations of different words. So ultimately, they can start thinking about reading in a different light. By focusing on the sounds that certain letters produce when grouped together, they can successfully articulate difficult words. And this, in turn, will help your children become better readers.
How to Start Teaching Alliteration at home?
Alliteration for kids is a definite process that you can gradually get into. If your child isn’t familiar with the concept, you should start with easy sounds and build your way up. Since the focus of alliteration is to get your kid interested in the sounds they hear, make it exciting. So if you say “the ssseagull sssings sssweetly”, they’ll recognize there’s something interesting and lively about how you pronounce words. Once their awareness of sounds grows, you can start to play alliteration games with them.
A few fun alliteration activities
1) Sing alliteration words to music
This is a great activity to get your children up and active. First, put on cheerful or lively music, preferably something your kids will like. Ask them to stand up and give them a sound to repeat. For instance, you can say “today we will be singing ‘p’ words”. Then you can start singing words with a ‘p’ sound to the beat of the music. It can help tremendously if you also associate some actions with the words. Chant ‘pen, pen, pen’, while also mimicking the action of scribbling with your hands. Then do another ‘p’ word like ‘pie, pie, pie’ and draw a round pie with your hands. After a few words, you can move on to a different sound and do the same.
2) Make up a sound-based story
This is a good activity for all children. Whether they have very little knowledge of alliteration or whether they’re just beginning to read words. So to start, pick your target sound then make up a story using words featuring that sound. Make sure to properly enunciate all the words, with special emphasis on the target sound. For example:
“One day, Peter the plush pet went to the pool. He peeped a plump palm tree. Perched on its pike, a parrot pricked his pinkie”
You can also let your kids add their own words to the story to make it more fun and enjoyable.
3) Give your kids alliterative names
You can add this activity to your normal routine. Your kids will likely find it funny if instead of calling them “Sam”, you use “Strong Sam” or “Smart Sam”. Adding an alliterative adjective to their name is a great way to help them learn that target sound. Not only will they appreciate the compliment, but they’re more likely to repeat it too. If you’re finding it hard to come up with names for a specific sound, you can use “silly” ones instead.
4) Help them come up with silly sounding phrases
This game is better suited for children who are aware of hearing alliteration. So the next step is an exercise for kids who can come up with their own silly alliteration words. It’s much easier for them to come up with made-up words for a particular sound than real ones.
Since you’re only playing with sounds, relevant vocabulary doesn’t matter in this case. As long as your children can think of silly phrases, they will enjoy this activity. For example, you can get them to make some figures using playdough. After they’re done, encourage your kids to give them alliterative names. Things like Biggy Baggy Boo or Vinny Vonnie Voo.
5) Add actions to tongue twisters
Children often enjoy tongue twisters and find them fun to repeat. Not only are they a great alliterative tool, but they can also assist with any speech or language issues. To make the tongue twisters more interactives, you can add actions and movements to the phrases. Here is a good example:
- Slippery snails are sad (all be sad)
- Slippery snails are sleepy (lie down)
- Slippery snails are strong (flex arms)
Alliteration Examples for Kids
Here are a few fun alliteration examples for kids. These will give you a start, but try to see what your kids can come up with, it will definitely be way more fun for you and for them:
- Funny fleas and fireflies fled
- Two teeny tiny turtles twinkle
- Fuzzy fluffy ferrets foraging the forest
- Hares hop happily hunting herbs
- Piggies play in puddles
- Poor plump piglets pacing around
- Large lion lounges on a limb
- A busy bee buzzes by a beautiful bloom
- Great gorillas grin
- Slimy, scary, slender snake slithers and sunbathes
- Gretta gathered green gumballs
- Peter planted peonies in the pot
- Little Larry likes licking the sticky lollipop
- Larry’s lazy lizard lays like a lump
And please let us know in the comments if you and your children manage to invent new awesome and incredibly tongue twisting alliteration examples!