the book

Did you know that using speech to communicate is one of the most complex things that we do as human beings? Yet it is something we don’t usually think about. Until we need to. 

The Sound Bites is an engaging read-aloud story for kids, as well as a tool for caregivers during those critical early years of childhood development. Embedded within this tasty tale is a focus on the 24 consonant sounds used in English, presented in the order in which children typically acquire those sounds. Included in the end pages are busy-parent-friendly tips to promote speech and language development at home and a quick reference guide for when to expect what sounds to emerge.

While there is much more to speech and language development than acquiring sounds, The Sound Bites is a starting point in bringing that complex thing we do, called speech, to a new level of awareness. The goal is for you and your child to think about and have fun with speech sounds, and appreciate that sounds develop over time and in an often predictable order. The witty alliteration enhances phonological awareness (thinking about and manipulating parts of language) and within that facilitates phonemic awareness (focusing on and playing with individual speech sounds). Phonemic awareness is not only a building block for learning to speak, it is the foundation for learning to read. Now that’s food for thought!