R is for Reading

Audrey is learning her phonic letter sounds. She does really well with them, she's always surprising me by pointing out letters that she knows, and she seems to enjoy making the funny sounds. So far she can consistently recognise and say m, s, z, r, w, i, b, h. She can sometimes/usually/with a little prompting manage a, e, v, p, l, o. So about half of the alphabet, she can just about recognise. That's huge! And she's only picking them up faster. Once she knows all the phonic sounds really well, we can start mixing them together to make simple phonic words - that's our gateway into reading.

We're also working on sight words, that is words that she recognises through familiarity without reading them using phonic sounds, because I think all the help we can give her in learning to read is beneficial. So we read books together, we point out words, we use word flashcards, we talk about words we see around us when we're out and about. But primarily, our learning-to-read method is based around phonics.

In this post, I'm going to share some of our favourite activities for learning the phonic letter sounds. It might seem very school-intensive, but really each of these things is just a game for Audrey - sometimes we introduce it, sometimes she gets the activity out herself, but either way if she's not interested then she just wanders off and does something else. No problem. What we actually find is that she almost always wants to play, and has a great time with it. The key is to keep it short and sweet - ten minutes is more than enough time for an activity at this age.

Alphabet wooden puzzle

I love this, Audrey loves this, it's great. I love almost all of the Melissa and Doug toys, they are educational, functional and beautiful (and no, I'm not on commission!). It was important to me to get one with a lower case alphabet, as we don't want to confuse Audrey by introducing capital letters yet.

We do use this as a jigsaw puzzle, although it is very fiddly for Audrey at this age she does enjoy it, however I most often take the pieces out and use them as prompts. "What's this?" "Audrey, what sound is this letter?" "Can you say mmmmmmmm?"

I let her hold the letters and feel the shape of them. The more senses involved in learning, the better, as far as I'm concerned.

I also do pretty much exactly this with the:

Magnetic fridge letters

These were our first intro to letters, and Audrey LOVES them. They're a great toy to learn with, because she can feel the shapes, stick them to things (I like to use a chocolate tin lid, and about three letters at a time), or play matching games with them.

This toy will grow with her, as she'll be able to use the letters to make words before she has the fine motor control to write easily.

Alphabet colouring

This one is oh so simple, but Audrey loves it. I just printed out some letter outlines, traced over them in black marker to make a nice thick line, laminated them (have I mentioned how much I love my laminator? I LOVE IT), and let Audrey go to town with some dry erase markers. Again, as she gets older it will grow with her, as she'll be able to trace inside the letters to learn how to make the shapes, and practice copying the letters on the white spaces.

I plan to make one of these with capital letters when she's got the lower case ones sorted.

Flashcards

Okay, I know it's blowing my own trumpet and all, but I'm so proud of these flashcards I made. And Audrey loves them! Which is the most important thing.

On one side there is a letter of the alphabet, and on the other is a picture of something beginning with that letter (be sure it is the phonic sound - so no xylophones or chairs or anything). I cut those out and backed them with coloured sugar paper, then laminated them and cut them down to size. Audrey gets these out and asks to play with them just about every day.

Black/white board

I draw letter shapes for Audrey on the board, and let her copy. I ask her what this or that letter is. Audrey loves to draw a w because it is the easiest shape to make. She points at her jagged squiggle and proudly says "wwwwwwwww" with a big grin.

Matching games

One of our favourite games is to get out the flashcards, usually three at a time, along with the three corresponding magnetic letters, and have Audrey match the letters up. "What letter is this?" "Can you find a ssssssssss over here?"

As she grows more confident with the letters, I think this will be a great game for helping her learn the finer differences between letters like n and m, b and d, and u, v and w.

Phonics songs and videos

Audrey cannot get enough of the Kids TV 123 videos, and they have a few great phonics songs which have helped her SO much. This one is our favourite.

Alphabet books

Audrey has a couple of alphabet books, and they're great fun to read through. We point at the letters and ask her what they are, and we point at the pictures and ask her what they are. Then we say "Yes, it's a monkey! Mmmm-mmmm-mmmmmmmmmmonkey!"

So those are some of our favourite phonics activities! I'd love to know yours. I'm planning on making some Montessori-style sandpaper letters to give yet another sensory perspective.

A note on how we introduce letters: we didn't start at the beginning with a, b, c etc. We started with the letter m, because it is fun to say and easy to recognise. There are some letters Audrey would struggle to say, and some she finds boring, and we wanted to avoid them at the start so that she was encouraged by her progress rather than discouraged. We found that she really likes certain consonant sounds, which is great, so we started out with those.

I aim to look at three letters at a time - one she knows well, one she knows, and one she's not so strong on.

With phonics, as with a lot of our learning, we practice the "three-stage" method. I will start by pointing at each letter in turn and saying the sound it makes very clearly. I do this a few times. The next stage would be asking her to "point to rrrrrr" and see if she can do it. The last stage is to point to the letter and ask her "what letter is this?" These stages can take a really long time, stretched over many "lessons", or they can be super quick, depending on Audrey. I try to keep it fun and low-pressure.

Oh Audrey, you are such a good reader.