Shiny Showy Shapes Alliteration Activity

Shiny showy shapes shall show sharpness. Yep, we are getting silly today. Really that is what learning should really be about with kids. Our literacy activities should be fun, silly and memorable!

This week my wonderful Early Childhood Educators Team is tackling the theme: SHAPES. I’m going to show you how we turned a lesson about shape recognition into a fun and playful phonological awareness activity. We are playing with alliteration.

Alliteration Activity

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What is Phonological Awareness?

Phonological awareness is the ability to hear differences in the ways words sound. Just as young children need to hear language before they can talk, they also need to hear language before they can read. Children with phonological awareness can do such things as identify initial sounds in words, count syllables in words, and identify words that rhyme. Having a strong phonological awareness is a precursor to being a strong reader.

What is Alliteration?

Alliteration is a series of words in a phrase or sentence that begin with the same sound. Tongue twisters are examples of alliteration.

Making Shapes

First, we made fun shape people. We cut different shapes from construction paper and then decorated each one with glitter glue, shiny paper, and crayons.

As we made the shapes we talked about different objects in the house that were similar shapes. Use any shapes your child needs to practice. Four or five work great for this activity.

Creating Alliteration Tales

Then, we started to brainstorm words that began with the same sound as rectangle. My 3 and 4 year-old both did a pretty good job with generating words orally.

I took a few of their words and strung them together to create a silly sentence. I said, “Robot rectangle rides round and round really rowdy in the racing ring.” This generated lots of smiling and laughing. Not all of the words in your alliteration style sentence need to begin with the same sound. You just need most of them to begin with the same sound.

My oldest caught on very quickly and created the next alliteration for heart. He came up with, “Harry heart hides hens and hippos high on the hill.”

When you pick triangle, you want to use the digraph tr. Some words that would work would be tree, try, truck, trick, trail and trunk. The same goes with square. Use the trigraph squ in words such as squirt, squirm, squire and squat.