most 3-4-year olds are able to break simple consonant-vowel-consonant (cvc) syllables up into their constituents (onset and rime). the onset of a syllable consists of all the consonants preceding the syllable's vowel, and the rime is made up of the vowel and all following consonants. for example, the onset in the word ‘dog’ is /d/ and the rime is /og/. children at 3–4 years of age were able to tell that the nonwords /fol/ and /fir/ would be liked by a puppet whose favorite sound is /f/. 4-year olds are less successful at this task if the onset of the syllable contains a consonant cluster, such as /fr/ or /fl/.