Letter of the Week: W

Contrary to what we might think based on our recent weather, winter begins next weekend. In honor of the change of seasons we will be talking about all things cold, snowy and wintery! Technically, ‘w’ is a consonant. From a speech perspective, /w/ is a wind sound. It is a sound cousin to /h/ as both are made by an airstream relatively unobstructed by the lips and tongue.

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Letter of the Week: R

Are you ready for a new sound? It is Reindeer time! ‘R’ is a consonant and one of the later developing sounds. In fact, it is typically one of the last sounds to be mastered (often not until a child is 6 or 7). It can also be one of the trickiest. /r/ is a hard working sound as one of the most common sounds in English. To complicate things, it changes slightly depending upon where in the word it appears and the vowels around it. Have you heard the term "r-controlled vowels"? Yup. /r/ can be "vowel-like". So, for our purposes here I'll talk about 'r' in general terms.

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Easing back in with a Review Week

I hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving and time spent with family. Since we took the week off last week to celebrate and count the blessings in our lives, this week we will ease back into our letter-sound of the week project with a review week. Of the 14 letters we have highlighted so far, we have covered 4 vowels (each with a short and a long sound) and 10 consonant sounds.

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Letter of the Week: T

Thanksgiving is coming! We are talking about gratitude/thankfulness all month and have a subtle Thanksgiving theme. However, while Thanksgiving starts with the letter 't', it starts with the 'th' sound. And we are not ready to go there, yet. So, next week as we highlight the letter/sound 't' we'll be talkin' turkey! ‘T’ is a consonant. From a speech perspective, ‘t’ is a tip tapper. The tongue [tongue tip to be specific] is doing the work to make this sound.

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Review Week #2

O, B, X, S, A, I, F, L, P, J, M, H, and U. Whew! We are halfway through the alphabet. And now it is November. This coming Monday we pay tribute to the men and women who have served, or are serving, our country. And then in a couple of weeks we take time to give thanks for all the goodness, big and small, in our lives. Thanksgiving, Christmas, Hanukkah, Winter Solstice… “The Holidays”. Busy, busy, busy. So, now through the beginning of 2014 (!) we will have several weeks of review with a few new letters/sounds sprinkled in. This coming week? A review week! You will also notice an over-riding theme all month of gratitude/Thanksgiving (with special focus on turkeys one week...but more on that in my next post).

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