The ability to distinguish between soft and hard consonants causes great difficulty in children of primary school age. Obviously, they should not be memorized, but learned to hear. And for this, the child needs to be prompted exactly how these sounds are obtained - this will greatly facilitate his understanding.
Always soft and always hard consonants
Not all consonants in our language are both hard and soft. First you need your child to remember those that are only hard: Zh, Sh, Ts, and also always soft: Ch, Shch, Y. To do this, you can, for example, make a commemorative plate, where there will always be hard consonants painted over the blue bricks, and always soft over the green cushions (the choice of color is based on how these sounds are designated in elementary grades).
If a child constantly sees this picture, which you put in his workbook or hang over his desk, he will quickly remember these consonants.
How vowels command consonants
Then you explain to the child that the rest of the consonants can besoft as well as hard. But neighboring letters will help to suggest this. If after our consonant there is another consonant, then ours is solid. For example: table. What comes after the C sound? So it's a hard consonant.
The vowel sounds “command” the consonant standing in front what to be. If these are vowels: A, O, U, E, S, then only solid consonants are in front of them. And if it is: And, E, Yu, I, Yo, then - soft. The softness of the previous consonant is also indicated by the soft sign.
Educational games
To make it easier for the child to remember this, try playing with it. Invite him to attach the outer side of his index finger to the palate and pronounce syllables in turn, where there are soft and hard consonants. For example: TA - TYA, ON - NYA. The child, thanks to this, will be able to remember exactly how a consonant sound is obtained. He will understand that when a soft consonant is formed, the tongue seems to move forward, and its back rises slightly to the sky. But when hard consonants are pronounced, this does not happen.
Throw a ball to a child, naming a syllable with a hard consonant, and let him return the ball to you, already pronouncing it with a soft one. For example: LA - LA, LO - LE, LY - LI, etc.
At school, students are encouraged to highlight hard and soft consonants using blue and green. Blue is hard and green is soft. Cut out some red, blue and green squares and ask them to jigsaw the word. The child will lay out vowel sounds in red, hard consonants, respectively, in blue, and soft ones in green. Take small words for this, from one-two syllables: fish, elephant, branch, chalk, etc.
Play word chain. You say a word that ends in a syllable with a hard or soft consonant, and the child calls the next word that begins with this syllable. Do not forget to determine aloud which consonant, hard or soft, was in this syllable: winds - fish - bagels - cinema, etc.
If you methodically explain to your child the difference between hard and soft consonants, this will help him to navigate more easily in the future, when studying many features of the spelling of the Russian language. Good luck!
