Location: indoor or outdoor

Materials: none

An important pre-reading skill is identifying the beginning sounds in different words. A natural place to start is with a child's first name-- these are often the letters and sounds they learn first.

Encourage your kids to be thinking about the beginning sound in their name by introducing Nonsense Nicknames. This means a nickname with their first name and another word that begins with the same sound. For example: "Sarah Spaghetti" or "Zebra Zack".

You can use the nicknames when inviting kids to snack or to lineup to go outside. Example: "First to line up is... G...G...G...Ginny Giraffe!"

You can choose a theme (ie: animals or food) or whatever comes randomly to you. As time goes on you can encourage your kids to think of their own nonsense nicknames based on words they know start with the same letter of their name.