Talk

Does his school use Jolly Phonics "hand gestures"?

If you are following JP it has a multi sensory approach which includes actions for each sound which is part of the programme

I don't know what school he'll he's 3.5

will leaving out the gestures now be detrimental? he likes to go and get and hold the corresponding magnetic letters when we're doing his DVD or CD or poster

No - I wouldn't have thought so atall. Go ahead and teach him to read - it's a wonderful gift that you're giving him.

There is no need to use hand gestures to teach phonics. Phonics has been taught for hundreds of years without hand gestures. I think the jolly phonics handbook is good for explaining to the teacher/ parent how teaching by phonics works.

I think you should carry on as you are. There are lots of ways of being multi senory if you want to be without the jolly phonics hand gestures. My children like cutting letters out of playdough. They both liked the songs on the jolly jingles CD.

I taught both of mine pre-school with Jolly Phonics with the hand gestures, but the time they started at school (at four) they both knew all their letters and had dropped the gestures.

that's reassuring, I do feel we're being quite multisensory already with the CD, DVD, posters, magnets, chalk board etc.. and today I tried to add in gestures but it sort of stunted his own discovery and enjoyment because it interrupted him from getting the magnets and placing them on the same letters on the posters IYKWIM which he really enjoys!

It won't be a problem as he isn't learning without at home while learning with at school which some children find confusing. Good luck.

thanks mrz, its hard to know where the line between helping his curiosity at home crosses conflicting with reception silabus and making reception boring for them IYKWIM

I mean he's nowhere near covering all the reception silabus at home but I did as a kid and it made me very lazy at school for later years and in the end I fell behind once I went up to older classes.. but that's another story

Problem is he was trying to work out letters and numbers himself and learningh them wrong, at some point someone had told him that S meant snake and M meant mummy etc and he understandably seemed to conclude that the letter was a symbol for those whole words and no other words.. so I have been trying to help him learn a more correct way before "his" way that he was working out got too fixed.

My DS loved words/letters and learnt them all quickly at that age. We just used jolly phonics and it wasn't a problem.

If your new school uses then Ruth Miskin system there are differences in the way it is taught

Perhaps you'd better double up with her Read Write Inc too, and set it as homework

The huge advantage of the hand gestures is being able to give a clue to the sound if the child is uncertain. I found them very useful.

Schools use many different phonics programmes so it would be impossible to use them all at home cybbo

I was being flippant

My personal view is that parents have got so much to teach their children they should wait until school for the structured stuff like jolly phonics. Introduce sounds but in a natural way rather than following a teaching scheme

As the OP said she has decided to do this because her son was showing an interest but developing a number of misconceptions that would make it more difficult for him later and not every parent is confident enough to go it alone (in a natural way) ...