Sono
letter sounds — each letter makes a sound you can say
Loading audio…
Press play to listen along. The line being read lights up as you go.
Show full transcript
Loading transcript…
Sono was a little songbird whose gift was sounds. Every letter, Sono knew, had a sound it liked to sing. Not just a name — a sound. And Sono loved to sing them: "/s/ like a soft wind, /b/ like a bouncing ball, /m/ like humming."
Sono landed on a letter S. "This one sings /sss/," Sono trilled, "like a snake, like the sea." The sound slipped out soft and long. A letter's sound was something you could feel in your breath.
A young sparrow wanted to try. Sono showed her the letter B. "It says /b/. Press your lips, then pop — /b/!" The sparrow tried: "/b/... /b/!" "You sang it!" A letter's shape on the outside, a letter's sound coming from inside her.
They matched sounds to letters all afternoon. Sono would sing a sound — "/mmm/" — and the sparrow would find the letter that sang it: M! Then "/t/" — and she'd point to T. Sound to letter, letter to sound, back and forth like a song.
As evening came, Sono and the sparrow sang their favorite sounds up to the first stars — /s/, /b/, /m/, /t/ — soft and clear.
The sparrow's sounds were getting surer every time. Sono nestled close, warm and glad. A letter you could only look at was one thing. But a letter you could sing — that letter was truly yours.
The LetterTots ensemble
Sono is part of LetterTots's distributed-narrative cast. Each character embodies a different curricular primitive; together they teach the full subject.
-
Kea
Letter-NAME knowledge (hero) — a parrot who says the name of each printed letter ('that's a B'); naming printed letters IS the #1 early reading predictor
-
Margo
Print awareness — an inchworm who follows the page left-to-right, word by word; tracking print IS knowing print carries meaning
-
Serif
Letter-shape discrimination — a mouse who matches same-shaped letters and tells look-alikes apart (b vs d); discriminating forms IS visual letter knowledge
