Tales of the unexpected with The Boy, my pride and joy.
A few months ago I spotted a set of Melissa & Doug alphabet stampers on another blog and fell in love with them. The only problem is that I can't stand stampers with ink as they just end up getting mucky, stained and the ink goes everywhere! I decided to make some scented playdough for The Boy instead to stamp onto.
I'm pretty sure that our home is like many other young families' homes all over Britain in that the vast majority of the children's toys and books are stored in a large, cuboid, storage system from a well-known Scandinavian company. It's efficient, cheap and it works.
Only it doesn't.
It doesn't work for books.
Granted they fit, and you can actually get a lot of them in the sections, but the problem that I've discovered is that The Boy forgets that they're there. For the vast majority of the time he does not remember about his fifty or so books in the dining room storage unit because he can't see them.
55. 'Hello! Anyone there?' (We went exploring in the woods and had a great time squelching through the mud and finding our echo.)
56. 'Spiderman' (This cargo net is always the first thing he heads for in a local park, it's a bit of an ongoing challenge for him as it is designed for infants and juniors, having different size nets as well as different sized ladders. He likes to measure his progress by how easily he can get over the bigger gaps, but has yet to attempt climbing up the sail of the 'boat'.)
57. 'Can' (He's been using a Reading Eggs app called 'Tap The Cat' to practise his reading, spelling and writing, and under my site's host's recommendation I bought this pen for him to use with the iPad. He's finding it so much easier to overwrite and it's better than finger tracing for the development of his writing skills.)
58. 'New teeth' (He finally got stuck into the chocolate Gruffalo we bought him for Christmas and relished eating various parts of him to make him less scary!)
59. 'Underwater lights' (Kara from Innocent Charmer recently recommended this underwater bath light to me, which arrived this week, and has brought a whole new level of fun to bathtime!)
60. 'National Pride' (St. David's Day!)
61. 'Lean' (We've been exploring Caerphilly Castle today in the most gorgeous Spring sunshine, and in one half of this photograph you can see the leaning south east tower of the castle. More on that in this weekend's Country Kids post.)
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A few months ago I was asked if we'd like to trial the Reading Eggs program; a web based program designed to help children prepare for school by developing their awareness of phonics, or as a booster for children who are struggling to engage with reading skills.
I'd heard about the subscription service but in all honesty, having spent a long time trying to find iPad apps with decent pronounciations of phonics to help The Boy, I was more than a little sceptical that it was just going to be another American voice mispronouncing 'm' and 't' and, quite frankly, winding me up.
I was wrong (not something I admit readily!).
Creating the account is easy; there is the ability to register for a free 14-day trial (with no credit card information entered at all) and the child's name is entered before selecting whether they have some reading experience (allowing for a test to be done placing the child at the right point in the system) or starting from the beginning. I chose to start him from the beginning, because although he has a good awareness of the alphabet and most phonics, I wanted to give him the opportunity to really benefit from the program.
When the child first enters into the land of Reading Eggs they are presented with a map of their progress with a pathway snaking through the land, cute characters and graphics aplenty. They are then taken onto the first of the letters with several different games to help them practise their recognition of the letter, and to practise the formation.
The Boy really enjoyed working through the vast majority of the games on each lesson; spotting the letter in a wordsearch format (both upper and lower case), identifying the specified letter in each word, finding the letter as it moved around the screen, etc. These were the most effective games for him. He also liked the challenge of trying to improve his time on forming the letter quickly, there are a few time challenges like this which work really well in challenging the user.
Every child has different preferences of course, and The Boy was a little frustrated with the game where he had to drag the word against the correct picture; drag and drop with a mouse is difficult for a 3-5 year old (luckily we have an infant sized mouse we can use) and the game needs to be completed twice, which he found frustrating having struggled to do it correctly once. However, this game is not on every level and is one small aspect which for my son was frustrating, others may like it.
I've noticed a vast improvement in his awareness and reading ability since starting on the program. He hasn't reached the end yet but when he does we'll be able to assess his reading age to see how he's progressed. I do think that Reading Eggs has helped him hugely with his phonological awareness, and ability to decode words then segmenting the phonics back together to create a word.
Accessing the parental dashboard, The Boy is currently on level 30, and has a reading age of 5 years with a sight vocabulary of 12 words and knows 74 of the 237 phonic skills. I feel very happy with his literacy development, and reassured that he hasn't suffered from not going to state nursery this year.
As both a primary school teacher and a parent, I can't recommend the Reading Eggs program highly enough.
I was given an extended short-term subscription in order to review this service. My opinions are honest and unbiased.
For the past six months, The Boy has shown an immense interest in reading and is able to recognise 80% of the alphabet and pronounce the sound (or phoneme) correctly. He astounded us a few weeks ago by leaning over Mr. TBaM's shoulder and reading a simple CVC (consonant-vowel-consonant) word correctly, and then floored us when he continued to read the next ten words correctly by sounding them out (segmenting).
The 'My Jolly Phonics' kit we've been sent to review has come at exactly the right time!
Jolly Phonics is the most widely used programme in schools for teaching children how to read. It splits the 42 phonics into progressive groups to learn, and addresses them in a fun manner.
Inside the beautiful storage bag is:
The parents' guide does a brilliant job of explaining the different stages to reading using the method of 'synthetic phonics'. In this case 'synthetic' refers to 'synthesising' the letter sounds together to create words using techniques such as segmenting and blending. It's an incredibly well explained guide and one that helps to understand the process of learning to read a lot better.
Every phonic in the Jolly Phonics programme has a character and action associated with it. Jolly Songs is a brilliant resource for helping children to learn these, and because it's a CD it can be played while doing another activity and through sheer osmosis, the actions and sounds are learnt. The accompanying booklet has suggested games for parents to supplement the songs.
Inside the kit are seven activity books; one for each of the seven groups of phonics. The activity books are really good quality; full colour with a good mix of stories, discussion points, sticker activities, practical games to play, physical activities developing both gross and fine motor skills, and notes for parents. I think the activity books are one of the best resources that Jolly Phonics producs.
Jolly Stories is a hardback story book with seven stories inside; one for each group of phonics. The pages are thick, colourful and have a large focused letter on them which the child can trace with his finger to develop formational skills. The stories focus on the characters and Jolly Phonics actions in context, and are a great way of consolidating the relevant phoneme.
I had some trouble installing the Jolly Phonics Games CD and had to put it on my school laptop as it wouldn't load onto my own machine. Both are running Windows 7 so I'm not sure what went wrong (The CD can be installed on both Windows and Mac machines). During the setup it's possible to select either precursive or print letters, and suggests that in the UK we install the precursive font, which I did anyway because that's what I use in the classroom. There are three levels of play; easy, medium or hard, with plenty of activities and games within each one. I would like to point out that it's worth reading the manual because some of the games (even in the easy level) rely on understanding how to blend phonics together, and this would cause children trouble unless they've got a firm grasp on the basic phonics of that level first.
The Jolly Phonics DVD features episodes from the 1995 television series which, as they are 17 years old, aren't of a brilliant recording quality. However the content is just as relevant. It actually reminded me a little of Fingermouse from my own childhood and the characters, props and images are bright and attractive. The only thing that jarred my professional nerves slightly was the inconsistent pronounciation. The first episode focuse on 'S', 'A', 'T' (the first collection of phonics taught), yet pronounciation ranges from 'sss' to 'suh' and 't' (blunt ended) to 'tuh'. This 'uh' sound, the schwa, is avoided at all costs in phonics teaching nowadays as it gives a false phonics awareness. I think the variation in the way the phonics were said sends mixed messages to young children learning to read.
As a parent I have found this set invaluable, as a teacher it was just as helpful. I specialised in teaching junior aged children who can invariably read by the time they get to my class. I've never been taught how to help a child read, and it's only through common sense, and now my own practise with The Boy that I really appreciate the different processes involved. However, many parents who don't know where to start when supporting their child in learning to read are scared of 'getting it wrong' (rightly so) and this starter kit is a great toolkit for exactly this purpose.
Overall it's a really good resource and I would recommend it.
I was sent this product for the purpose of this review, my opinion as a parent and teacher are honest and unbiased.
This morning Mr. TBaM was playing Letterpress on his phone when The Boy leant over his shoulder and read out 'MAT'. Surprised, Mr. TBaM typed a few more words along these lines (simple CVC words) and The Boy sounded them all out and read them. All of a sudden, it was like the tools for reading we're just there and understood.
We're amazed. And proud. Very proud.
As I've mentioned before, I'm not sending The Boy to state nursery for his free 15 hours. I know, shock horror right? There is a good reason for this, several in fact which are far too boring, convoluted and not important at the moment.
However, what it does mean is that I want to be sure that I'm doing the best that I can to get him ready for Reception next September. And this is where I'm going to do something that I don't tend to do very often on this blog; I'll don my teacher hat, draw upon my experience as a Literacy co-ordinator and come up with a bank of pre-school activities that focus on developing pre-Literacy skills.
Pre-Literacy skills are vital to ensure that your child is ready to learn how to read and write when they get to school. Don't be in a rush to teach them yourself, that's the point of the teachers who have gone through years of training to ensure they are delivering the best teaching to our children. I've worked in a Reception class and trying to re-teach a child phonics is nigh on impossible. More important for us as parents is to ensure that they have the pre-Literacy skills in place, general things like: fine motor skills development, hand-eye co-ordination and communication. More specifically; sequencing, shape and pattern recognition, letter awareness, positional language, and (for those who are ready) proper pronounciation of phonics.
Next month when the big kids return to school, I want to focus in on these all important skills and create a resource bank for parents like me. This is where I'd like some help please.
If you have a post on your blog about pre-Literacy skills (like the ones listed above) please leave that in the comments box below. If you have any ideas that you'd like to contribute (but no blog posts) leave those in the comments box. I will credit everyone in.
Let's help our children learn through play, let's treasure their childhood and not push them to grow up!
