Cbeebies - RazzleDazzle

The Razzledazzle TV series and website, together with the BBC Schools Radio programmes Listen and Play, are designed to develop the 'foundations of literacy' in children between the ages of 3 and 5.

The key foundations for literacy skills are children's spoken language and listening skills. Razzledazzle, our guide to the site, invites us to travel through four 'portals' to develop children's language through 21st-century versions of age-old teaching strategies.

Rhyme Time

New action rhymes, based around familiar onomatopoeic sounds, and employing rhythm, rhyme, and movement to aid memorisation

Chit Chat

Starting points for getting adults and children speaking and listening in everyday situations

Bish Bash Bosh

Specially-written chants combining language play with a steady beat, creating opportunities for movement, music, rhythm and vocabulary development.

Once Upon a Tale

Original stories, featuring all the strengths of the oral tradition - rhythm, rhyme, repetition, language play and plenty of audience participation.

You'll also find the Not So Long Song, which urges children to listen and attend to significant sounds, despite the distractions of an increasingly noisy world.

RHYME TIME

Rhymes have always been an important element in preparing children for reading. The three animated rhymes here are performed on the Razzledazzle programmes, where children can concentrate on listening - using their imaginations to transform the words into mental pictures. This online version provides the spoken version accompanied by pictures. The written words are provided simultaneously, as well as lots of 'sound effect words' in the pictures. This combination is ideal for pre-reading activities.

Learn the rhyme

Watch and listen to the rhymes lots of times, print out the words for display and help your child learn each rhyme by heart. This is one of the best ways of developing auditory memory. Demonstrate how to do this by joining in with the rhyme yourself as you watch, and encourage your child to do so too.

On first watching, just join in with rhyming words and any refrain.

On repeated watchings, join in with larger chunks. Don't be worried about getting it wrong - demonstrate that, if you say a wrong word, you just laugh and try again (this is one of the best lessons about learning any child can have).

Use actions from the programme or make up your own to help with memorisation and to make performance more fun. When you think you know it, try performing the rhyme yourself from memory, with your child listening and helping. As soon as your child wants to try it, let him/her perform, and give lots of praise for all the bits remembered well. Keep this activity very informal and emphasise the fun of knowing rhymes by heart. Once you know some, they're a great way of filling in time when waiting at the bus stop, in the supermarket queue, on car journeys, and so on.

Sounds and letters

The use of 'sound effect words' in the rhymes is useful for introducing children to the individual sounds of language, which are called phonemes

the idea that alphabet letters or groups of letters can represent sounds.

In order to read and write, children must be able to discriminate between the phonemes of English (there are about 44 of them, depending on your accent). The poems in Rhyme Time provide opportunities to home in on four familiar sounds: sh, oo, ar and ee. Each time, try saying the sound and see if your child can say it back. Then make up actions for various sounds. Play a game where you make an action, your child makes the appropriate sound (and vice versa).

Once you're sure your child knows a sound, introduce the main way we write it. Point out the letters (e.g. oo, sh) when they stand for your sound in the print you see on common notices, signs or in the books you read (e.g. school, shop). Keep any work on phonics very playful and don't go on for long. If your child seems to be losing interest, stop!

Say and 'read'

Once your child knows a rhyme by heart, encourage him/her to recite it while watching the animated version and seeing the words below. For many children, this can be an effortless and pleasurable way into reading, as they suddenly click how the symbols on screen link to the words they speak. If you've played about with some of the sounds and letters (see above), they are more likely to see the relationship between spoken and written words. But if your child doesn't catch on, don't worry. Different children learn in different ways - and the key element in the early stages is enjoyment.

Sound Around

These sound riddles are shown in the Razzledazzle programmes to introduce Rhyme Time. In this Sound Around game, you click to hear a sound and then choose between three 'sound symbol' animations. A picture confirms the correct choice. This game helps develop your child's attention to and discrimination of sounds in general (see parents' article). Draw the learning into real life by helping your child notice sounds in the environment (different traffic noises, sounds in the supermarket, sounds in the kitchen, and so on). When drawing attention to sounds, talk about whether you could imitate the sound orally - and try it!

what the sound reminds you of whether it's loud/soft, high/low, pleasant/nasty.

The sounds are:
- the sea on the shore
- water dripping
- a cow mooing
- a horse's hooves
- autumn leaves rustling
- the crunch of a carrot
- a phone ringing
- a doorbell
- a drum
- a cat meowing
- a bee buzzing
- fireworks exploding
- cymbals crashing
- a cock crowing
- water splashing
- wind blowing
- tap shoes tapping
- beep of a supermarket checkout

They are featured again in Chit Chat Chest - see Chit Chat notes for further ideas.

Some key phonemes of English

The phonemes are represented here by the letters - or letter groups - most commonly used to teach them. Please note that a phoneme is a sound, and there are often many ways of representing a particular sound (e.g. er could be herb, church, bird, earth, word). Phonics is not the same as spelling.