An open teal The Play Way box with the Sounds and Rhymes Play Kit contents arranged above it: a box of coloured spot markers, the Slimy Rhymes game, Eye Spy with My Little Eye, the CVC Word Builders game, the Shape-a-Sound set, two ways to play cards, and the program and learning snapshot booklets.
A boy lies on a blue rug beside an Eye Spy picture board covered in small illustrations, smiling at the camera, with a letter card on the floor nearby.
A boy sits cross legged on a blue rug studying a Slimy Rhymes card held close up, with a green cardboard monster standing beside more rhyming cards.
Overhead view of a child sorting Slimy Rhymes cards into rhyming pairs on a blue rug, with the spot markers box and the Eye Spy box open alongside.
A boy kneels on a blue rug and places a card in front of a standing green monster from the Slimy Rhymes game.
An adult and two boys sit on a blue rug with two Eye Spy picture boards, a pile of counters and a letter card between them, the game box behind.
A boy holds up two Slimy Rhymes cards to the camera, one reading wall and one reading ball, grinning.
Two boys jump in mid air over a line of orange, yellow and green spot markers laid out across a blue rug.
An open teal The Play Way box with the Sounds and Rhymes Play Kit contents arranged above it: a box of coloured spot markers, the Slimy Rhymes game, Eye Spy with My Little Eye, the CVC Word Builders game, the Shape-a-Sound set, two ways to play cards, and the program and learning snapshot booklets.
A boy lies on a blue rug beside an Eye Spy picture board covered in small illustrations, smiling at the camera, with a letter card on the floor nearby.
A boy sits cross legged on a blue rug studying a Slimy Rhymes card held close up, with a green cardboard monster standing beside more rhyming cards.
Overhead view of a child sorting Slimy Rhymes cards into rhyming pairs on a blue rug, with the spot markers box and the Eye Spy box open alongside.
A boy kneels on a blue rug and places a card in front of a standing green monster from the Slimy Rhymes game.
An adult and two boys sit on a blue rug with two Eye Spy picture boards, a pile of counters and a letter card between them, the game box behind.
A boy holds up two Slimy Rhymes cards to the camera, one reading wall and one reading ball, grinning.
Two boys jump in mid air over a line of orange, yellow and green spot markers laid out across a blue rug.
An open teal The Play Way box with the Sounds and Rhymes Play Kit contents arranged above it: a box of coloured spot markers, the Slimy Rhymes game, Eye Spy with My Little Eye, the CVC Word Builders game, the Shape-a-Sound set, two ways to play cards, and the program and learning snapshot booklets.
A boy lies on a blue rug beside an Eye Spy picture board covered in small illustrations, smiling at the camera, with a letter card on the floor nearby.
A boy sits cross legged on a blue rug studying a Slimy Rhymes card held close up, with a green cardboard monster standing beside more rhyming cards.
Overhead view of a child sorting Slimy Rhymes cards into rhyming pairs on a blue rug, with the spot markers box and the Eye Spy box open alongside.
A boy kneels on a blue rug and places a card in front of a standing green monster from the Slimy Rhymes game.
An adult and two boys sit on a blue rug with two Eye Spy picture boards, a pile of counters and a letter card between them, the game box behind.
A boy holds up two Slimy Rhymes cards to the camera, one reading wall and one reading ball, grinning.
Two boys jump in mid air over a line of orange, yellow and green spot markers laid out across a blue rug.
An open teal The Play Way box with the Sounds and Rhymes Play Kit contents arranged above it: a box of coloured spot markers, the Slimy Rhymes game, Eye Spy with My Little Eye, the CVC Word Builders game, the Shape-a-Sound set, two ways to play cards, and the program and learning snapshot booklets.
A boy lies on a blue rug beside an Eye Spy picture board covered in small illustrations, smiling at the camera, with a letter card on the floor nearby.
A boy sits cross legged on a blue rug studying a Slimy Rhymes card held close up, with a green cardboard monster standing beside more rhyming cards.
Overhead view of a child sorting Slimy Rhymes cards into rhyming pairs on a blue rug, with the spot markers box and the Eye Spy box open alongside.
A boy kneels on a blue rug and places a card in front of a standing green monster from the Slimy Rhymes game.
An adult and two boys sit on a blue rug with two Eye Spy picture boards, a pile of counters and a letter card between them, the game box behind.
A boy holds up two Slimy Rhymes cards to the camera, one reading wall and one reading ball, grinning.
Two boys jump in mid air over a line of orange, yellow and green spot markers laid out across a blue rug.

Sounds and Rhymes Play Kit

The Play Way
Regular price $149.00
Sale price $149.00 Regular price $0.00
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Support the listening skills that reading and spelling sit on top of, with six tools that turn rhyming, blending and pulling words apart into games your child asks to play again. By developing sound awareness early, children learn that words are made up of smaller parts, which is a crucial stepping stone for future reading and writing success.

This play kit was curated by our speech pathologists for the child who talks easily and is moving on to start reading. Before anyone can read a word they have to hear that it is made of parts. Doing this in a play-based way happens in silly sentences, in rhyming pairs, and in hopping one sound at a time across the floor. Your child does not need to know a single letter to start this process.

This is the second in our series of three language play kits, originally created for ages 3-6 years. Start here if your child has foundational communication skills down pat, but now needs to understand how language works at the sound level to prepare for reading and writing.
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An open teal The Play Way box with the Sounds and Rhymes Play Kit contents arranged above it: a box of coloured spot markers, the Slimy Rhymes game, Eye Spy with My Little Eye, the CVC Word Builders game, the Shape-a-Sound set, two ways to play cards, and the program and learning snapshot booklets.

Sounds and Rhymes Play Kit

Regular price $149.00
Sale price $149.00 Regular price $0.00
Unit price

WHAT'S INSIDE

What's in this play kit

A full kit of play-tools, curated to work together.
Spot markers

Spot markers

Coloured discs to lay out on the floor to turn sound into movement. Give your child a word and they hop it out, one spot per syllable in kangaroo or one spot per sound in cat, so the parts of a word turn into something they can see and land on.
Slimy Rhymes

Slimy Rhymes

A matching game for rhyming pairs, played with monsters. We love the silly sentence rule: once your child has found the pair they have to put both words into one sentence, and that is the part that makes a rhyme stick.
Eye Spy with My Little Eye

Eye Spy with My Little Eye

Picture boards packed with tiny illustrations, and your child hunts down the ones starting with the sound you are after. The ways to play booklet uses the same boards to cover syllables, for rhymes and for early spelling, so your child meets each new skill on a board they already know their way around.
CVC Word Builders

CVC Word Builders

Over a hundred letter tiles, colour coded so the vowels and the consonants look different, with picture tiles and boards to build the word on. The matching cards have the word printed on the back, so your child checks their own spelling instead of waiting to be marked.
Shape-a-Sound

Shape-a-Sound

Twenty six illustrated alphabet cards with the capital and the lower case letter on each, and wax sticks to bend into the shape on top. Making the letter with their fingers gives your child the shape and the sound at the same time, bringing an interactive and multi-sensory experience.
Parent Guide

Parent Guide

A guide for you (the adult), covering what each game is working on, how to make one easier or harder on the day, and where these skills sit in the build up to learning to read.

Why we built it this way

It starts in the ear, not on the page

It starts in the ear, not on the page

Hearing that cat is made of three sounds comes before reading it, and at that point it has nothing to do with letters at all. It’s all about the sounds. The games in this kit work through it in order, whole words first, then syllables, then rhyme, then the single sounds, then the letters that stand for them.
They can be up and moving

They can be up and moving

With this kit your child hops the syllables out across the floor, or holds up two rhyming monsters, or bends a wax stick into a letter. They play. And this helps them learn and retain the information for building on future skills like reading and writing.
The same game, just adapting the levels

The same game, just adapting the levels

When the single sounds are too hard, you can adapt the levels, the videos teach you how. Nothing gets put away half learned or too-hard, and they build their skills and confidence over time.

INCLUDED WITH YOUR PLAY KIT

The videos that come with it

Everything in the kit is ready to use from the day it arrives, so your child can be jumping over a line of spot markers as soon as it is open. When you want the learning behind it, there is close to two and a half hours of video across sixty five short sessions. One of our speech pathologists goes through every game in the box, then plays each of the ways to play so you can watch before you try it. There is also a set for you on what sound awareness actually is and the order these skills develop, from syllables and rhyme through to blending, breaking words apart and the first letter sounds. The same set covers how to keep playing with sounds out loud with your child in their normal everyday. We'll send your invitation to access it all when your kit ships.

WHO THIS PLAY KIT IS FOR

If starting school looks like this

  • They talk beautifully, and rhyming words is still a total mystery.
  • I read to them every night and I have no idea what else I am meant to be doing.
  • I found reading hard myself, and I do not want the same thing for them.
If any of that sounds like your child, this is who we built the play kit for.

Who made this

Kait is an OT. She has been working with children and families for nearly 20 years, and she has four kids of her own. She built this play kit alongside the speech pathologist team because talking and reading are not learned the same way. Most children pick up talking by being talked to. Reading has to be taught, and the part that has to come first is sounds, and there’s so much fun and play to be had at this age that she couldn’t resist creating something for this stage of language development. The five games were curated by our therapy team so the skills are developed in order, from hearing whole words down to the single sounds inside them. Your child is playing a matching game or jumping across the floor, and the learning happens in amongst all the games and the play, not as a structured drill sequence.
  • 5,000+
    Australian children have used our play kits
  • 20 years
    of Kait working with children and families

Frequently asked questions

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