Once your child shows an interest in seeing letters around in their environment, you can introduce them to different sounds. Words are made up of small units of sounds called phonemes. Phonics teaches children to listen and identify the phonemes in the words.
The first sounds they will be interested in will be based around the people they know – the start of their name, M for Mummy, D for Daddy and names of siblings and grandparents.
Jolly Phonics is a resource which is used widely in primary schools as each sound comes with a song and action. These actions help the children to learn the sounds. Here is the YouTube link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Qpn2839Kro At the start of our phonics lesson we will watch this even if she hasn’t learnt all of the sounds yet. Each sound has an action which we use whenever we say the sound.
We use flashcards and go over the sounds we have learnt with the actions. This is the order that the Jolly Phonics sounds are taught.
Activities
Simple Phonics Lesson
Stage One (As a guide, aged 3 and upwards)
Introduce the new sound (S) and have it written down for your child to see. Do the action from the Jolly Phonics as you say the sound.
- Have a phonics bag/box with 5 objects in it, starting with your sound. E.g. spoon, sock, scissors, star, sun. If you don’t have objects you could always draw them.
- Make up a song or rhyme and shake the bag around. Our rhyme is this: “Shake it up, shake it up, shake it all around. What’s in the phonics bag and what’s coming out?”
- Child takes out one of the objects and tells you what it is.
- You say “s s s for sock” and your child repeats. You then write down the word and underline the S.
- Repeat with other objects.
Stage Two
Your child could then move onto writing the sound. Examples include:
- Writing a big S in the air and then a small one.
- Writing and S on their hand and on your back and tummy.
- Get out a baking tray of sand or salt and they can write the sound in the sand or salt.
Car Phonics
For this activity, use a toy which your child loves.
- Use sounds that your child has already learnt – p, n, m, d, and s.
- Find an object starting with with each of those letters.
- Place the objects apart and place the sound next to them.
- Say the sound “m” and your child will drive the toy to the sound “m” and then tell you what the object is.
- Ask your child to repeat “m, m, m for milk” and placed the sound card and milk in the car.
- Repeat with all of the other sounds.
Stage One (As a guide, aged 3 and upwards)
Once your child is linking the sound to the first sound of the object, you can take the sound card away and just have the objects. You would say, “Find me the object that starts with the ‘d’ sound.” What is it? “d, d, d for duck.”
Stage Two
Your child could write the first sound down for each object – on paper, in sand or in chalk on the ground.
The Spinning Game
Stage One (As a guide, aged 3 and upwards)
- Go on an object hunt yourself and look for objects starting with the letters your child has learnt.
- Place the letters and objects in a circle.
- Ask your child to spin the bottle and tell you what object it lands on. Yes, ‘t, t, t for tray.’
- Spin again and it lands on the pig, ‘p,p,p for pig.’
- Repeat until you have completed all of the objects.
Stage Two
Your child could write down the inital sound to the objects as you go along. They could write in a notepad, card, whiteboard, blackboard, on the back of a cereal box. Anything to make the writing fun!
Sensory Sounds
Stage One (As a guide, aged 3 and upwards)
- Find some objects starting with the sounds that your child has already learnt. Try not to always use the same ones.
- Using a baking tray, fill it with anything sensory for your child to feel – rice and spaghetti, leaves, sand, soil or pasta.
- Write the sounds on small pieces of card and place them in the sensory tray.
- Ask your child to pick up a sound and tell you what it is – “d”
- Can they match the ‘d’ to the object?
- Yes, “d, d, d for dinosaur”
Stage Two
Your child could write down the inital sound to the objects as you go along. They could write in a notepad, card, whiteboard, blackboard, on the back of a cereal box. Anything to make the writing fun!
Splat the Sound
This activity involves your child hearing the initial (first) sound of each of the words. You could change the splat for jumping on the cushions or jumping from the sofa, whatever you think your child would enjoy.
Stage One (As a guide, aged 3 and upwards)
- Get your resources ready. We needed a spatula, three cushions and flashcards of the sounds you are using. Make sure they are sounds that they have already learnt.
- Have a list of CVC (consonant, vowel, consonant) words ready: sit, sun, sip, pig, pat, pen, cat, cup, cot.
- Ask your child to splat the sound that the word begins with. Show them how to do it first. ‘Sit’ over exaggerate the ‘s’ so that they can hear it, and then splat the ‘s’ sound on the cushion.
- Now it’s their turn. Go through the words, alternating between the different words so they can splat the different sounds.
- If your child can’t hear it, don’t worry it takes a lot of practise!
Stage Two
Instead of the initial sound your child could splat that last sound which is harder to hear.
Phonics Shop
This activity involves phonics and maths. Setting up a shop gives the opportunity for role play too.
Stage One (As a guide, aged 3 and upwards)
- You will need: Different sorts of food using ONLY using the sounds that your child has learnt, sound flashcards, price labels, till., money, purse, basket and bag.
- First of all set everything up like in the photos.
- Ask your child to match the sound to the food, listening to the initial sound in the word. ‘Tomatoes’ Over exaggerate the ‘t’ to help you child here the initial sound. Repeat with all of the other food.
- Decide between you who is going to be the customer and who is going to be the shop keeper. For the first time it is easier if you can be the customer as you can show them what to do.
- Choose One item of food which you would like to buy. A banana which is 4p. Count out 4 coins from your purse and hand them to the shop keeper. Then buy something else. Fish for 7p and count out 7 coins. Put your things in a bag and say bye. If you have an older child, you can buy two items and add them together and then pay.
- Swap over so you are the shop keeper and your child is the customer.
- If you do not have lots of 1p coins, don’t worry, use the coins that you have. It is the counting out of the coins, using one number name for each coin that matters, rather than the coin’s value. Children start to learn the value of coins in year one.
Stage Two
Your child could have a go at writing a label for the food and sounding out each word.
Other Phonics Games
Stage One (As a guide, aged 3 and upwards)
- Give your child a sound that you have learnt and ask them to go round the house and snap things that start with that sound. They might pick ‘p’ and they see a plate and ‘snap’ it!
- Have all of the flashcards face down and they turn them over and tell you what they are.
- Put all of the sounds on a wall, you say a sound and the child splats the sound with a spatula! A popular game!
- Hide and Seek sounds. Hide them round the house and they find them and tell you the sounds they have found.
- Place sounds in a sand tray and they have to dig them out.
- Look at books and search for different sounds. What sounds can they find? How many of each sound can they find?
- Have a tray full of sand or rice with objects in it. Child pulls out an object and matches it to the initial (first) sound flashcard.
- Have plastic cups turned upside down with one sound on each cup. Child has a ball and tries to knock down the ‘p’
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