Tutoring / LMB Homework

LiPS is a complicated program. It involves learning how sounds feel in your mouth, not just the letters and the sounds. Do not expect to be able to teach this. You can, though, support and encourage your child to share what they are learning and asking them to think about their LiPS lessons as they try to read or spell a word. Your child should be learning the consonant sounds and how those feel. Each has a label and many have a quiet and a noisy sound. For vowels there is a vowel circle, again thinking about what your mouth and jaw are doing when you produce this sound. With that considerable amount of knowledge learned a child will begin to track 2 and 3 sounds changing sounds as they hear changes. This is done with blocks (perhaps felts) so that the child is thinking about the sound and not memorizing the letters. It is possibe to begin trackiong with only 5 consonant sounds and 3 vowel sounds, but still it is not something you should expect yourself to teach. We do have a bingo type game or card matching game to reinforce the sounds and labels. Perhaps you could be taught somethings like that to practice with your child. There is software that practices the sounds and labels.

A game sounds like a good way to reinforce the teaching. Where can I get this? The teacher laid out the vowel circle and frankly I don’t think I can replicate that even with a sheet and a list of sounds in order. Do you lay out the whole thing at the first lesson? She also did several quiet/noisy sound pairs in four categories (e.g., scraping tongue?)

To play a simple game for a beginning student you could use two sets of the mouth pictures for the 5 consonant pairs. lip poppers, tip tappers, back scrapers, lip coolers and tongue coolers. You could turn them face down, like concentration or memory, and turn them over trying to make a pair. You could say the label and the sound. You do NOT want to associate letter names with them at this point. Or you could play Go Fish, Do you have a lip popper /p/ (make the sound)? Your clinic would have to give you a set of mouth pictures that you could reproduce to make pairs. Remember your child’s job is not to memorize these terms, just to use them and feel what their mouth is doing. The vowel circle is hard at first. You could just reinforce three types of vowels, smile (smile broadly with your teeth pretty close together and make the sound of /i/ (like it). open, drop your jaw and say /o/ (o-ften), then purse your lips for /oo/ like (pooch). Those are my own word for the sound you want because LiPS does NOT teach a key word (a is for apple). You are just thinking about the shape of your mouth. I know you want to help and practice, but you want your child to learn the sounds correctly. Sit in when you can and observe as your child learns. Try to relax, the sounds will be introduced slowly enough for your child to learn them. You want a good foundation, not errors that have been practiced and have to be unlearned. LiPS is excellent, but it takes a lot of practice to teach. Learn along with your child and you can be a good support.

hI aNGELA. yOUR SUGGESTIONS ARE SIMILAR TO WHAT THE TEACHER LAID OUT FOR ME TODAY. oVER THE NEXT 2 WEEKS WE’LL BE PRACTICING THE INNER VOWEL CIRCLE AND 4 CONSONANT GROUPS. i REALLY LOVE THIS METHOD. tRULY MULTISENSORY! (Sorry for the screwed up caps- my husband always leaves it on cap lock and I’m a hunt and peck typer)