My daughter gets very upset in the phonics circle, how can I boost her confidence?

[mummyloveslucy]

Hi, my 4 year old daughter has been at nursery part time since she was 2. It is a very good nursery and all the staff are very dedicated. Our daughter has a severe speech disorder making most of what she says unintellageable to people who don't know her well.
They play a game at nursery to do with phonics and they clap whilst saying c-a-t cat. (a clap for each sound). Shop for instance would be sh-o-p 3 claps.
Anyway, the teacher told me that our daughter often finds this phonics circle upsetting and dosn't always take part. She dosn't seem to hear the differences in sounds and she can't tell the difference when I pronounce something right or wrong.
Eg- she says curn for girl. I'll play a game saying "are these words the same or different" and I'll say curn then girl, and she can't seem to hear any difference. We have had her hearing teasted and it's A1 apparently. The Speech therapist said she thinks she has a problem with auditory processing. She can hear o.k but her brain dosn't process the sound correctly.
She can follow instruction well enough though.
I just wondered what we could do at home to help with her recognising different sounds? I'd like to get her confidence up so she can take part at school and not cry at the thought of it. It's tricky to work with sounds as I can't tell if she can hear or understand them, as she can't pronounce certain ones. If you have any ideas please let me know.

[mummyloveslucy]

What about Jolly phonics flash cards? would they be good?

[LIZS]

I'm not sure that just repeating the sounds will be enough tbh. Can you find groups of things and words with the same sound so for g - girl, gate, goat , goose etc
Draw/make pictures and make up simple story or rhyme to along with it.

I didn't find the JP flashcards that helpful with ds as they had no visual element or context . Usborne do some illustrated ones which may suit better. Maybe a word/sound bingo would be a nice game to try - elc used to do one and maybe Usborne or Orhcard toys.
What does her salt suggest ?

[TotalChaos]

the jolly phonics cd and songbook might help - there are actions to go with each/letter speech sound so there's a visual as well to help her remember.

[mummyloveslucy]

Yes, she has the jolly phonics c.d and listens to it in the car, she loves it. It hasn't made any difference to her speech or recognicion though.
Word/sound bingo sounds great. Also gathering toys of a certain letter.
At nursery, they have a sound of the week and we have to bring in a toy each week beggining with a certain letter.

[mummyloveslucy]

I need to fish out the book that goes with the C.D. I know all the songs off by heart, so I could just sing them to her while showing her the letters.

[LIZS]

This site has some interesting resources

[mummyloveslucy]

Thanks LIZS.

[mummyloveslucy]

She loves games, but they have to be interesting to keep her attention.
We played buck a roo once and when it bucked she screamed and ran out of the room. The woos!

[mummyloveslucy]

Thanks Cargirl.

She's due for speech therapy in 2 days, and she will be working on listening to sounds. I'll hopefully get some work sheets to do with her at home too.

[CarGirl]

the sound therapy is all about the auditory brain processing and developing the correct area of your brain so that you can actually hear the sounds and then reproduce them.

If you want for an assessment they would quickly be able to tell you if they can help or not - they just listen to a special cd every evening for 10 minutes (they are custom made) you would still continue with speech therapy.