Phonics!

It's all changed since I was little and now Oliver's learning Phonics - a heads up on this before he started school would of been nice. 

So he's learning the Ruth Miskin, Read write inc phonics and I've brought him the flash cards that they have been using at school. 

Read Write Inc. Phonics are for four to seven year old children learning to read and write, also for seven and eight year olds who need to catch up. It's taught for 20-40 minutes a day in reception classes (like Oliver's who turned 4 in August) and an hour a day for children in year 1 and above. It's proven to develop fluent and enthusiastic readers, understanding of the text, confident speakers and keen writers. A little stat for you is - Seven of the twelve schools rated by Ofsted as outstanding 'Reading by six' used the Read Write Inc. phonics. 

Read Write Inc. Phonics flashcards are the same as those used in school by Oliver's teacher, I know Oliver struggles with certain letters and I wanted to purchase these to help him at home as well. He loves the little rhymes on them for example M = Maise mountain mountain. 

I've also brought Oliver 'Fred the frog' 



Fred the frog is the same as what the teacher has at school, so I wanted to keep it the same at home too. I brought him in WH Smiths and he cost £9.72 but he was worth it as Oliver really likes him. So who is Fred the frog? Well basically he is a beanie toy used as part of the Read Write Inc. Phonics programme to help introduce little ones to letters, sounds and words in a fun way at a pace they can keep up with - if it's fun they're more likely to be interested. Fred frog can only say and read words in pure sounds, so the children have to help him = learning! 

Oliver also brings home from school a range of 'high frequency words' to learn and he loves them, I try to make them exciting and we usually practice them at bath time. He's very stubborn and I bet his teacher doesn't actually know how good he is at them! There's 44 high frequency words he must know before he can start bringing home the books from school.

Recently Oliver has started reading this book to me - Tom's Mad Mop, which he got free from BookTime. 

 

I will be honest to you, Oliver can't read all of the words inside but he can read;

• Tom /Tom's 
• Mad
• Mop
• Got
• A
• On
• It
• Kids!
• And
• To

So I am very proud of him and feel I should get my hands on some more little books like this... To see his face light up when I say yes you were right, is lovely! This book is great because it repeats over and over and he can start to recognize the word, obviously the pictures also help. I feel like he personally gets on better with this book than he does his flash cards but obviously, will continue to do both.

Has your little one started with phonics? Have you any tips for us? 

Mary-Kate, x