It's an exciting time in my house because my little 4-year-old is beginning to read!  Now I've tried teaching her before, but unfortunately, it's next to impossible to do so before they're good and ready.  Riley's showing all the signs though of reading readiness and so I'm on the constant hunt to find fun phonemic awareness games for her.

Of course, with Learning Resources, I didn't have to look very far.  Their new toy, Rhyme & Sort Rockets, may be just the tool I need to rocket my preschooler's early literacy skills into the stratosphere!

Rhyme & Sort Rockets is designed to teach and reinforce rhyming, phonemic awareness, beginning vocabulary, word families and much more.  This game  features 8 kid-friendly rockets and 80 real-life photo cards which help young learners discover all the wonders of the English language.  Rhyme & Sort Rockets is geared for kids ages 4-years-old and up and promotes phonemic awareness.

Phonemic awareness is the ability to hear, identify and manipulate individual sounds in spoken words.  Phonemic awareness plays a critical role in helping children learn to read, write and spell.  Rhyming is one of the basic levels of phonemic awareness.  Words rhyme when they have the same sounds at the end, such as bug and rug or whale and pail.  Children should be able to listen to words and decide whether or not they rhyme.

The Rhyme & Sort Rockets game also comes with a handy activity guide, chocked full of great ideas on how to really utilize the power of this toy.  Riley loved the different ways to sort the tiles and this new rhyming skill has oozed over into our daily lives now too.  When we're in the car or just doing chores around the house, we're constantly rhyming new words we come across.  We even make up nonsense words to use, but they always rhyme with the one before it.

Our two favorite activities we like to play using the Rhyme & Sort Rockets game are:

• Rare Air - Lay out three cards (where two rhyme and one does not) and then ask the child to put the non-rhyming card in their rocket.
• Cosmic Consonants - Lay out three cards and say something like, "I'm thinking of a words that starts with b and rhymes with sat."  The child then puts the correct card in their rocket.

If you have a budding reader on your hands, be sure to encourage their early literacy skills in a fun and engaging way.  I highly recommend the Rhyme & Sort Rockets phonemic awareness game from Learning Resources to launch them on their way!

Disclosure: I received the Rhyme & Sort Rockets Toy from Learning Resources in order to facilitate my review. No other compensation was received. This product review is based on my own personal experiences with this item and is completely honest and objective.

WIN IT!

One lucky reader will win the Rhyme & Sort Rockets Toy from Learning Resources!  (ARV $38)

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