[00:00:00] Welcome to Stories That Stick with me, Laura, as your resident storyteller. I'm here to show you how oral stories inspire and captivate minds young and old. Tune in each week to hear a compelling story and join in meaningful conversations. I'll be digging deep into the heart of storytelling, connection, and listening.
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Welcome to today's episode of Stories That Stick. Today I have with me Beck Goodman, the founder of Grow with Beck. I'm excited to chat with her on all things play based learning and how this intersects with foundational literacy development. What kind of brought us both to the work that we're doing [00:01:00] and how to support children in, opportunities and moments where they may not be as engaged or focused in their learning and how we can support them in making some pivots there.
So I'm so glad to have you today, Beck. I'd love if you took a moment to tell all of us a little bit about you, what's brought you to the work that you're doing and anything else you'd like to share before we get started.
Beck: Yes, absolutely. Thank you so much for having me on. Very excited. , so yeah, like you said, my name is Bec Goodman.
I use she, her pronouns and I'm based in Manhattan. And here I, I do a couple of different things. One is Myself and my team work in home with students and families ages two through seven to get them into Kind of , you know a reading kick build some foundational skills and do quite a bit of parent education around What early literacy?
, and how we can, you know, make it fun and really based in connection. And then I also work with teachers and [00:02:00] schools by offering workshops curriculums and programs so they can incorporate some more science back developmentally appropriate activities into their every day. So I'm super excited to be here.
Laura: Awesome. I am so glad to have you as well. So, let's just make sure we all have a shared understanding. When you're saying that you're using play based learning, what does this mean to you and what do you find about it? Why is it so effective and important for families and schools to be embracing?
Beck: I think at its core the most important thing about Learning being play based means that it is consensual by both parties.
Both parties enjoy it. The grown up enjoys it, and the child enjoys it. If it results in whining or nagging or a feeling like you're, there's forcing, we know it's not based in joy, so it's probably not play. Play looks differently for kids. So for some kids, play based learning can be something that's structured [00:03:00] like a board game.
That is really engaging for them. And for some kids, play based learning needs to be more child led and needs to be more fluid and organic and needs to look like writing lines and practicing letter formation and nature and the sandbox. So, for adults working with children, I think the most important part is that if your child is finding joy in the activity, you know you're on the right track.
We do have some kind of helpful frameworks when thinking about what actually is play and, you know, I think it exists pretty clearly on a continuum from things like free play that is entirely child led, things like running and jumping and swimming to things that are, you know, adult led, maybe some more formal like worksheet activities, board games, card games, and then there's space in between.
There is. Pretend play or inquiry play, where you're engaged in conversation. There is where you set up a experience for your child to have, maybe like you're baking, and they're following a [00:04:00] recipe. So there's different amounts of structure and adult led time during that, but at the, at the core of it is joy.
Laura: Yeah, we all know that, right, and that mirrors for us as adults that if we are not intrinsically motivated and finding joy in something that we're doing, especially if it's hard or new, we're going to walk away from it, right, if I don't actually want to be learning knitting and I'm getting having a really hard time with it.
If it's not enjoyable for me, it's going to be much easier to quit. And I think one of the things that we know about learning to read is it can be really hard for some children. For some children, they pick it up and it's easy and they go and run with it. And for others a lot of that resistance we know can be a red flag to let us know that it's something that's hard.
And. Rightfully so. I know you know everything that goes into teaching a child how to read and it's a lot of things that have to all work together and so many skills that need to be built in together [00:05:00] so centering joy. I super agree how foundational that is for children. I'm curious. I love that you, it sounds like what I heard you say was the majority of your work when you're doing in home support with the children.
A lot of the work that you're doing is parent education. Is that what I heard correctly? Yeah. So what is it that you're educating on? Are they just believing myths or outdated information or like what is that? What are you finding?
Beck: So much so much.
I think one is that you know, a wonderful thing about our culture of education here is there is a really strong emphasis on literacy and parents really have a good understanding that reading with your Children and your child is early access to some literacy tools is really foundational. So that is something that I really enjoy talking with parents about that.
We always come together with with a core belief. Um, but a bulk of my Yeah. you know, kind of parent education [00:06:00] surrounds what are the foundational skills of early literacy? I think for a lot of parents, they're thinking of flashcards and sight words and being able to read any word in any book.
And for our twos, threes, fours, five year olds. That is not the most important thing, we have a ton of research that tells us that the most important thing for our youngest learners is building strong phonological awareness skills, and none of that has to do with letters, none of it has to do with tracing, none of it has to do with native reading of chapter books, or you know, multi syllabic words, that is not What is appropriate and you'll know that immediately because your child becomes disengaged and we've lost the joy Which I always talk about like the moment there's a you sense resistant or disengagement It's an opportunity for you as a grown up to pivot That is your challenge as the grown up their challenge is to learn the material Your [00:07:00] challenge is to pay attention to the cues that they're giving So I talk a lot about these core phonological awareness skills of rhyming, first letter sounds, sound blending, segmentation of sentences, words, compound words, sounds, how to do that kind of organically throughout your day.
So it's not a sit down structured time. It's just exposure to these different ways of word play. I call it and then how that kind of builds into the trajectory of fluid reading.
Laura: Beautiful. I know it's so easy. I'm a parent myself of a four year old and a six year old. And I've been in early childhood since forever, and I have my master's in reading.
So I've got, in some ways, the best of both worlds, right? And in other ways, it's that struggle for me all the time, because I am so eager for my children to be reading, but also have to pick up on their cues and recognize that. And I forget some of the things [00:08:00] like phonological awareness that come and it's like second nature to me.
That's the same as saying French fries. Like I could describe that inside and out and I forget how unfamiliar it is for many caregivers. And. How, underutilized that ability to just play around with words and or orally tell stories. We know how powerful that is, but it is something that it seems to be this huge disconnect, right?
And when I was in the classroom a lot, there were would be families that wanted to know why worksheets weren't coming home, right? Why weren't they having letters that they were tracing? What were they learning and how could they be reinforcing things at home? And so much of my conversations with the families would be that same type of conversations where it was like, hey, your children actually need to be playing and you can be playing alongside them.
And I think pinpointing, just like you said, in that continuum, we know children need a And we also know that the research [00:09:00] says that when there's that that guided play right when the adult makes those intentional moves, and it may not necessarily be in the things that you're saying or doing with the child, it may just be that invitation of adding the clipboard and a visual that has some words that they're interested in
you notice they're making. Ice cream out at the mud kitchen. The next day you print a little menu that has some words on it and pictures and you just slowly add that . simple it seems to me.
And that I forget to sometimes share it with others because I think everybody knows it. And so I think it's really great that the work that you're doing is not just going in and supporting the children, but also supporting the families. And I imagine when you're playing with the children, sometimes the families are engaged and are watching.
So they're able to see you modeling it.
Beck: Yeah, For my folks, I sent home a ton of resources and videos and pictures and I think that, you know, a common theme that I hear from parents and, and teachers as well in the [00:10:00] classroom is there is so much going on in a day. What I offer as a simple suggestion to enter, you know, to curate a moment, is a really big lift for us grownups, and it's helpful for grownups to think, well, you know what, for 15 minutes, I'm going to sit down and I'm going to teach them how to do X, Y, and Z, because that works for our schedules and our brains, and it's a little bit easier to do that than to say, you Hey, you know what, as a practice in your house, if your child finds joy when you talk like a robot, talk like a robot a lot.
Tell them to go sit on the c ouch. How silly is that? Where are they sitting? Now it's time to go to the b ed. Where are we going? That's way harder to incorporate in because we can't. structure the time. And grown ups, we're always looking for structure. And of course structure is very important in a child's day too.
They need consistency and to know what to expect. But [00:11:00] structured learning time does not fit all kids. And so it's our job to do that lift of building in that playfulness and sprinkling in these skills and this modeling throughout our day.
But it's tricky.
It is,
Laura: right? I mean, many of us adults, right, we need that control.
It helps us feel, for many of us, regulated and without it, it can be hard. And especially, we know, also, essentially what we're talking about is changing a lot of mindset and a lot of habits, because the way many of us learn how to read is not what's happening now. And so we, our experiences don't align with the experiences that maybe we should be giving our children.
And so that's, that's that kind of shift as well. Right. Right.
Beck: And I, I think that for a lot of folks they don't recall how they learned to read. They learned to read in kindergarten, first and second grade, and the reading instruction is not a salient part of their memory. The feeling that they got from reading is a really salient [00:12:00] part of memory.
I think about, I know we were talking about this before we hit record. But about my early literacy experience as a dyslexic child in the days of whole language, right? This is back in the nineties and how absolutely terrifying it was. I was the child in the classroom who did really want to participate.
So I would constantly set myself up for failure in volunteering to read out loud. And then the crushing devastation when I had to then look at the words and read out loud. And I don't know why I kept doing that to myself. But, that is my memory of learning to read. And that's really a painful part of my early learning journey.
And I think for some parents, they think back to that and they are filled with fear that their child will experience that. And so there's this rush of want for early intervention and support, which is coming from such a beautiful place of protection. And for another set of folks. Learning to read was super easy for them, [00:13:00] and so they don't understand why you can't just do it.
Come on, I did it at three. And so both sets of parents are coming from a place of love and care and intention. We just need a little bit more education about how to execute those beautiful wishes in a way that fits your child.
Laura: Absolutely right. As well as the wealth of knowledge that we have now about understanding how Children learn to read, right?
What a gift that we have that now for sure. , so I know one of the things that you talk about is supporting Children and focusing through play, right? And working, let's say in the 3 to 5 range. How long is it realistic to expect young Children to be able to focus during not their free play, but this kind of more adult guided play. That may be a board game, that may be memory, that may be initiated by the child initially, but then not sustained.
Beck: Right, right, that the grown up needs to push along and support, absolutely. So I think a [00:14:00] general rule of thumb for the vast majority of students is like, two to three times their age in minutes.
So if there are three, we should be looking for about six to nine minutes of focused engagement. And I don't think focus at this age means seated, crisscross applesauce, looking at your eye, nodding, participating. That is not what we want to be seeing. I mean, for some kids, sure, if you're really into drawing a picture and you're sitting down and you're drawing, cool.
But for a lot of kids, they're filled with movement, they're filled with energy. And it is an adult myth that we can't both move and listen, we can't both rock and look. We can do all of those things. we as adults multitask all day long and our kids are able to do that. That's a part of them regulating and being able to receive information.
So that is my kind of general timeframe. And I think the most important thing that I kind of try to share with grownups is because of [00:15:00] how a child's brain is growing just so rapidly. When we think about learning a skill, we often think about spending, whatever that is, like that 10, 000 hours, whatever to master it.
That's not the reality for our kids. They can master skills with high quality repetitions and access to it over the course of like four or five minutes because their brains are just primed for it. So when we have faith in what they're able to do and we're able to follow their, the cues, the learning becomes much easier and much more evident.
Laura: Absolutely. And the connection I often make for families or others that may not be so sold on it is if we take a child who has a strong interest in dinosaurs. Minecraft, princesses, whatever. Through minimal exposure to these words, , children can understand a video game through a couple times of playing it better than I could reading about it on Wikipedia.
[00:16:00] Children can pronounce Really complicated names of dinosaurs and or correct you that a Brachiosaurus is not in fact a Brontosaurus because of where the holes are or that Aurora lives wherever and wears this dress versus Cinderella and right because it's of interest to them, they've maybe been exposed to it a handful of times.
But they soak it up and in the same way if a child is interested, engaged and ready to start making sense of all these symbols that are everywhere around them, then they're going to start soaking it up and that's why Children first recognize the first letter of their name because in many settings, that's what they're seeing over and over and it becomes meaningful and it becomes exciting and they understand it and they retain it.
And that's why letter of the week is not valuable because they are isolated. They are disjointed. They have no nothing to any child and it's spread out over so much time. How do you form any connection with that? Right. [00:17:00] But that's the way that children can show us. They can get intently focused on those things that are of their interest.
Beck: Yeah absolutely. And I think that also that should be the forefront of this conversation around early learning is That when we create the learning spaces so that our children feel naturally engaged, those are the feelings that they're going to take with them. They're going to remember that they just loved that experience.
They were so excited to find that dinosaur in that book. And they happen to now know it's on page 27, which is a two and a seven. And that is a really confidence building experience for a child. So when we're thinking about these skills. I always bring parents back. I was just on the phone with the parent, literally right when I was hopping on.
Because she got a report that her child was really resistant to doing some drawing and some writing. And, and this, you know, teachers had flagged there were some fine motor concerns. And I was like, oh, [00:18:00] that's so weird. Because I happen to know that she loves to write these words and draw these pictures.
If there's fine motor concerns, we'd see it across the board. We would not exclusively see it in moments of disengagement. Right? Could you imagine if you, you had a difficulty that needed intervention, but only when you didn't want to do something. No, it's because she doesn't like it. And that's, you know, there is something to be said about Moments in the day where we just have to do things, brushing our teeth, going to bed, taking a bath, going to school, going to the doctor, those are parts of the day where there's not that flexibility.
Drawing a self portrait I think we have some flexibility on, me personally, because we practice the skills that we're targeting in a lot of ways that fill that child with really positive feelings and offer an opportunity for connection with an adult, which is really really motivating the most valuable thing to a child is attention from a loved adult.
So let's make a positive attention.
Laura: Absolutely. So let's [00:19:00] say you're in the classroom and a child gets out a memory game and it's matching pictures of initial sounds and you're starting and you're playing it. Like what? What are signs to look for to know these kids are focused because we are not looking for necessarily those Children sitting in the chairs patiently waiting for their turn.
Mhm. So what are those signals to let us know that they are engaged, that they are focused, that they are playing, or, okay, we've met that limit, it's been the six to nine minutes, and we've hit it, and we need to check ourselves, and allow this game to be over, and not keep them in it, to the detriment of all of us, and fall into a power struggle.
Beck: Right. So, I think when kids Three to five, when they feel uncomfortable, they do two things. They either shut down, disengage, don't talk, don't look whatever, or they become incredibly silly. And we all know what those [00:20:00] incredibly silly kids look like. The kid who was just flipping over the cards and matching the word, now just put it in his mouth and is saying, and I think very naturally.
We want to correct that behavior because that's not the way you play the game. That is disruptive. We cannot move on like that. but I think if we take a little bit of a look inside, we just peek a little further. I think what the child is often experiencing is a moment of discomfort because something switched in them, they no longer want to do it.
But because you are a grown up and authority figure they also know that they don't have permission to stop in the way that they have free play and that's important. We don't want kids to think they can just walk out of a classroom whenever they want to. We need them to know that there are boundaries and limits and they do need to listen to grown ups.
We're here to keep them safe. So that's something we really want to honor in them. They're understanding the power dynamic. And the way that we reinforce that is by narrating to them what you're seeing and asking some questions. By saying like, Oh my goodness, [00:21:00] I noticed that you just got very wiggly.
Are you still interested in playing or are you ready for something new?
Laura: And
Beck: 9 out of 10 times, they will just totally snap back, stop being silly, snap back to a totally reasonable, you 5 year old and say, I'm ready for something new. And you can say, perfect, let's clean it up, but then you can hop over to whatever section or like, you know, whatever your next thing is.
And the incredible thing, when you. Reframe those moments in this way, is that the child will then begin to notice that when they feel uncomfortable, they can instead of getting very silly and disruptive and eating the cards and whatever it is, they can just say, can we switch to something new? Absolutely.
What a totally reasonable request or yeah, you go one last time. I'll go one last time. We'll put it away. I always have a plus one rule. So when you say you're done, absolutely. We'll take our last turns and then we'll be done. That way we also aren't faced with sometimes it's just in a moment of strife that we [00:22:00] disengage, which is okay.
A strife and struggle. We try it one more time and then we hop on out. So we're honoring that voice. And that's, a really cool growth to see in kids that they're able to really self reflect like that.
Laura: Yeah, because that is what's happening, right? , I could so clearly in my mind see my 4 year old daughter doing both those behaviors, right?
And that is, we know behavior is all a form of communication and we have to be those detectives where we're able to remove ourselves, remove our trigger, take that pause, and say, what is this child actually saying? Oh, this child is saying, I'm done. And yet, this child is also four, may not exactly know how I'm going to receive that, maybe doesn't know that they can say to me, I don't want to play this anymore, or has said that before and I've ignored it, or whatever.
And instead, you're mirroring back what you're seeing, and then giving them that language. Oh, you're done? Okay, yeah, you could just say, I don't play anymore.
Beck: Thanks for letting me know, right? And I think it is also these kinds of moments is what makes learning between a loved adult and a [00:23:00] child so impactful because no longer are we talking exclusively about letter recognition and first sounds.
Now the real skill that we're practicing is that self reflection. Maybe the kid did not even identify that they became silly because they were done. They often don't even know. Of course they don't know. They haven't had enough opportunity to practice that monitoring of their body and of their attention.
So, now all of a sudden we've kind of turned this moment into a real social emotional skill building moment and that really builds a strong relationship of trust and respect.
Laura: Right, we know nine tenths of what we're doing in early learning spaces are supporting children in social emotional development and self regulation.
And that's going to show up in all ways. And like we were saying, Literacy learning, for some, can be really fun and easy, and for others, especially as they're getting a little bit older, and we are maybe targeting different skills, can [00:24:00] become trickier, right? I mean, why does the B and the P and the Q and the D all look the same, just opposite ways?
Because when you tell me this is a triangle, and then you turn it upside down, it's still a triangle. I mean, we contradict ourselves. 24 7.
Beck: Right. No, it's, it's definitely I think for a lot of kids also because it is so abstract. And it's a real testament to just how brilliant children are because it is so crazy to me that I'll have kids who are totally reading and still need assistance in the bathroom to clean themselves up afterwards.
And I'm like, the fact that those two things can exist at the same time in one body is mind boggling, right? But it is so tied to both their natural brain, which is, for young kids, is in some of their most organic state. We're only going to get it more diluted as they get older. But yeah these are really tricky skills.
There's so much information going on. The names, the sounds, the [00:25:00] formation, the blending, the context, the meaning and comprehension. The sound production, when we're still building our oral motor skills with R's and L's, I mean, that's very difficult to do. And they, they have just this natural determination,
Laura: driven
Beck: by their natural curiosity and love time with, with grownups that allow them to be authentically try so often, like let's nurture that.
Laura: Yeah. Absolutely. So I know that the other thing you talk some about is this idea and I think you touched on it of reducing power struggles that can come between adults and Children during learning. And so if we're supporting Children in a play based environment, this is naturally helping to avoid those conflicts, but they're still going to arise, right?
And so how? How can we be reducing those power struggles? And I think you've alluded to really, it falls on us [00:26:00] to be noticing and pivoting.
Beck: Yes, unfortunately, we are the adults in the situation, quite literally, so it is our responsibility to be very intentional about the ways in which we communicate through these moments, when our, our kids are as, as little as infants, because that is when conflicts first arise when they're crawling, or putting things in their mouths, or touching things, and you pick them up and move them and they scream, that is our first conflict, that is our first power struggle, even if they don't have the language.
Right. So a couple of things that I think are really high impact as we look at diffusing these moments. One is I'm a big believer in leading with yes. I saw this in my own classroom where, you know, I, especially in the beginning of the year, every teacher will tell you to be really, really strict on routine so that, right, to really get everyone into a rhythm.
And for our youngest learners, [00:27:00] You literally need to know how to use a pencil sharpener. That's a very functional skill. We need to do a lesson on it. We need to learn how to use the glue because that's functional. But what I found was, because I had such a vision in my mind about how I wanted it to go, things that I ultimately, when I took a step back from, I found I did not care about at all.
I was shooting down. I was creating conflict. So I think that if we challenge ourselves, and I really recommend parents to do this, and teachers as well, for about 48 hours, is to every request a child makes, Unless it's unsafe or really, really, you know, beyond, right? No, we're not going to Disneyland tonight.
That's not realistic. But right, when they say, can I have ketchup with my spaghetti? If there's no dietary concerns there, let's lean in and say yes, and see how that impacts our mealtime. When they say, can I wear my sparkly shoes? Let's lean in [00:28:00] and say yes, what if they do get scuffed? What, what would happen if that happened, really, that in and of itself is hugely impactful.
And it also does another thing, which is when you lead with yes, in the moments when you say no, they're really noticeable
and
built up this trust that you're going to say yes at any possibility. I will say yes, if we can do it. When I say no, it has meaning. No, we can't cut our shirts with those scissors.
That's just not how we use the material. It's not an option. I've never had a child cut their shirt with scissors because it's just, we can cut a lot of things. Shirt's not one of them. so I think that is really, really powerful. the other thing, that I think is, is really powerful is engaging the child in the problem solving.
So if. you're having difficulty, you know, and, child's not sitting at circle time, right? And, and they're rolling and they're rocking and they're screaming, and it's just not manageable for the other children. [00:29:00] We want to offer typical interventions, right, like wobble seats and fidgets and maybe they need a more structured seat, right?
We want to put all that in, but I also want to ask, hey, you know what? I am looking that during this circle time, I do not want to see any kind of touching of other people's bodies. It's just not appropriate. What can we do for you that will help that? Would it help you if we put socks on your hands?
Would that be a little, would that help? Sure, let's try it. What can we do? Because kids have great ideas. They offer a ton of solutions that you would never think about, and their buy in immediately reduces the conflict because they're all so invested in fixing the problem. And that's great skill building for later in life.
You know and very aligned with just play based philosophies of allowing children to be the leaders of their own learning.
Laura: So what advice in, let's say, those scenarios. Love that. I try to do a yes day every couple weeks with my own children because I homeschool and I work from home [00:30:00] so it's, it's us.
A lot. And as much as I feel like I say yes all the time, in reality, if I actually probably tracked it, I'd probably say no a lot more than I think I do. But they also ask for candy and video games 24 seven. So it's like, you know, it's hard. It's hard. It's hard like to drop. But my husband says to me, like, well, what would happen if you let them eat candy all day and play video games?
Like, what would happen, well, maybe. So, how about these moments where educators are really struggling with getting children interested in literacy activities? Children are just not gravitating to any of these natural opportunities. Then what?
Beck: Yeah, I think in the same way we want to honor a child's interest, we can also honor a child's disinterest.
So that, that's one. Again, what would happen if that three year old didn't like tracing letters? They might like it at three and a half, so just because they're not interested in it doesn't mean we don't offer it right like just like the concept [00:31:00] of food on the, on a plate, you want to give things that we know that they're going to like, and we want to offer them something new.
So, I think you can continue to offer it. I think, however, I've really seldomly met a child who is not immediately drawn to silliness and joy. It's their magnets for it. So again, if the child's not interested in what's being offered, our job is to repackage it. So here is a couple of quick ways that I do it.
One of my students favorite games to play is the silly word game. They take magnet letters. They string up a bunch of them, and then I touch and say all this down, so I'm modeling, very clearly, the skill. I'm modeling it, and it makes a really silly word, how ridiculous, and then we even put that silly word in a sentence.
Now that's, now we've talked about grammar. Is that silly word a verb? Is it a [00:32:00] noun? Is it an adjective? Can we create a scene around this silly word? One of the things that you can do to beef this up is to limit the number of letters that you're giving to the child. So they're not pulling from a thing of 26.
If you want to target six letters, you can make a lot of silly words with six letters. And through additional repetition, Of them creating this silly word, and you touching and saying it, they are leaned in, they are engaged, and now all of a sudden, you walk away from that six minutes and you're like, Wow, I just had twenty five high quality repetitions of the letter C.
That's crazy. And in a different setting, we would never have that.
So, I, I hope through that example,
Laura: I No, I literally, I just imagined almost every child I know when they have magnetic letters and they're starting to figure out that letters make sounds, and they put a thing of them, like, What's this say?
What's this say? Of course! They do that. They do that. Cause that's [00:33:00] them being like, Hey, guess what? I'm interested. And I know that this says something. And you have that key. Just like the book with no pictures, right? That BJ Novak wrote, where you're saying, like,
Beck: how fun. And then we can tie it to a learning moment by being selective about the letters.
Are they uppercase? Are they lowercase? Are the consonants one color? And the vowels are a different color? And how can we make natural observations? Or how can we set up structure and say, Hey, you know what? All of our consonants are blue. All of our vowels are red. We're going to make a silly word.
All silly words need at least one red letter. That's how our language is structured. We can naturally introduce it into these moments. Um, where now it just makes the word even sillier. So I really encourage grownups to take the onus on us to say, what are kids naturally finding engaging?
It's this silliness. It's this playfulness. How are [00:34:00] they doing it? Every four year old walks up and goes, Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. They all do it all day long. Let's do it, too.
Laura: Mm hmm. Yeah. I love that. I think it's great. And the same way we know that phonological awareness can be done with nothing, right?
And so much of that can just be silliness. I mean, my children love telling jokes And they make Absolutely no sense, right? But they're playing around with language. They're trying to figure out and at some point the adults are telling jokes that actually make sense, and then we're explaining what the words mean, right?
And how words can have multiple meanings. But in the same way, you're singing songs. And you can just make up rhyming words, right? And then they join in and they start rhyming words. And then before you know it, and a couple more times, they're just talking about something and then they notice two words rhyme or that they kind of sound the same, or, you know, I don't know, my favorite moment is when children recognize words, start with the same sound.
But I hate that in our language, we don't. [00:35:00] have a thing to call it in the same way that we can say yeah, these words rhyme. I like, what if we had a word to name it? Because all we can really say is, yeah, they start with the same sound. But I wish there was something else. Because kids, when they start to notice that, that's that big indicator to me.
Like, oh, okay, they're ready for what's next. Because they are starting to attend to the individual sounds. Yay. Now we get to start playing around with phonemic awareness. And we're getting to it. Yeah. No, I think. Rhyming.
Beck: Rhyming. Right, I had actually never, um, had this like deep desire for a word that meant first letter sound, but my god now do I have it.
So thank you for giving that to me. That will never be fulfilled.
Laura: It won't, it won't. And it's funny because like alliteration It's like, yes, but not really, because it's that different that cadence, right? Of, like, saying a Sally sells, she sells by the sea, so it's tongue twisters. But yeah, and I always, I always [00:36:00] felt, you know, I tried to, I taught a lot of multi language learners and believed a lot in Krashen's work, and so knowing that the total physical body response, so I used to do, like, mouse.
house like those rhyme I did like very like big movements and I used to and then I would point like this for initial sounds but I just like really always yeah felt like there should be a word and it is interesting to me that it's not been come up.
Beck: Yeah. And
Laura: all that's happened. Well,
Beck: I think when we get off this call, you and I should call up Webster's.
Honestly, I think you have a really good idea. I'd love to hop on board. Yeah. No, it's so true. And I, I also think that this idea of wordplay. Can be tied to some really heightened topics, things that we think about for way older kids, like syllabication. I find for our youngest kids, that is the first phonological awareness skill that you develop, often before rhyming.
Because it's
Laura: Oh, absolutely. [00:37:00]
Beck: They are padding out words like it's no tomorrow and everyone's shocked because it's somehow so complicated and it's actually very natural. And one of my favorite games to play with kids, a little older, probably upper threes, fours and fives. is I'll give them a syllable and we have to figure out words that start with the syllable.
So if they're not quite at first letter sound,
you can
think of a word that starts with a, like apple, absolutely. Or apricot, absolutely. You know, how can we play with that?
Laura: That gives
Beck: kids a little bit something more to hold on to. And you can add some context around it, like, Uh, in the fall, on trees, I always see an apple.
Oh, an apple! That's what I was thinking about. And that is a great way. Uh, yeah. We'll get these super complicated words, Uh, where we're manipulating sounds. We're doing all this substitution and [00:38:00] deletion and manipulation. Yeah. And you think, like, wow, how are they doing that?
Laura: Mm hmm. Yeah, I love to start that's my I love to do that as well with compound words right when you start to introduce them to that and so you could even do that beautiful going from a compound word and being like what other words can you think of that start with snow, and then taking that right that onset.
And then building it to what starts with this initial sound. I love that, that gradual buildup. That's awesome. well, I know that we could all day literacy, especially giving little tips. but I hope that this was helpful for some people to kind of think a little bit more about that, that gray area, that in between of natural free play.
And what we know about how children are actually going to learn reading and that it is not going to happen in the, in a vacuum with no adult, quote unquote, intervention, and what that can look like, centering joy and centering, I think, like you said at the very beginning, that it's consensual, that you [00:39:00] are centering the children and their engagement in it and recognizing and owning, like, all right, they're disinterested in this, I'm walking away from it for now, I'm going to keep offering it, and Um, and so
Beck: think that's a good synopsis for a 50 minute chat could be something that is a classic me situation
Laura: beautiful.
So where can people find you find out more about you or hear what you have to say?
Beck: Yeah, absolutely. So we are on every social media platform for better or worse. So on Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, YouTube, at Grow With Beck, I share a lot of activities and continuing the conversation around these connective moments between grownups and kids and keeping it fun and keeping it impactful.
You can also sign up for our newsletter, you can do that on our website at growwithbeck. com. read a blog post. We're kind of everywhere. So I look forward to hopefully [00:40:00] seeing many of your listeners on Instagram and just kind of keeping the conversation going.
Laura: Beautiful. And I'll have all those things in the show notes so people can grab that and follow along and get some more silly ways to engage learners.
Yes. Yes. Well, thank you so much for
Beck: having me. I hope you have a wonderful day. Thanks.
Speaker: The end. But really, that's it for today's episode of Stories That Stick. Inspiring and captivating minds, young and old. Remember, stories have the incredible ability to spark conversations, ignite imagination, and create lasting connections. If you loved what you heard, be sure to subscribe to the podcast and leave a five star review.
It really does make a difference. And, if you have a story to share or a topic you want me to explore, reach out to me on Instagram at LittleStoriesThatStick. Until next time, keep working that storytelling muscle and tell stories every day.
