First, let me just say that the full title of this post would be “Count The Words In A Sentence” BUT I don’t want you to assume that your little one understands what a “word” is or a “sentence” is for that matter.
If you were to open a book to any random page and ask your child to “point to a letter” he/she probably could do it if you have practiced letters a lot. But if you asked your little one to point to a word, sentence, or certain punctuation mark, your child might be very confused. That is because understanding those concepts of print takes a lot of familiarity in every day reading practice.
In fact, your child is NOT going to learn what a word is or a sentence is in this activity, as far as pointing to them in a book goes. Today is a LISTENING activity for reading.
You are going to tell your little one that today we are going to play a listening game where he/she listens to you tell stories and your little one is going to count how long or short your stories are.
“First I am going to talk about you.
YOU…….are…….awesome!
That time, I used THREE words to talk about you….listen again and count on your fingers with me:
You (hold up one finger)……..are (hold up another)………awesome (hold up a third).
Now listen to the way I describe you this time and try to count on your fingers how many words I use to talk about you:
You…..have….blue….eyes.
Did you hear how many words I used? Let’s count….”
Repeat this listening activity until your little one is making up his/her own sentences and telling you how long or short they are.
Make this an everyday activity…how many words can we use to talk about our puppy? Or baby? Etc.
***An extension to this activity is to use cubes to represent each word in the sentence. This will give your little one hands-on and visual practice to really see how long or short the sentences are!
