To think X is NOT for Fox

[IHopeYouStepOnALegoPiece]

Fucking squiglet....you can't have every other letter using word starting with said letter then throw in "X is for a fox a at the end of his tail"

F is for Fox....F

Phonics is taught through sounds. So you can't have 'xylophone' because that doesn't make the 'x' sound that you can hear in fox, box, (and even socks)

Phonics sounds are created by different spellings. So I have a DC in reception who is drawing a picture of a fox and a box and a pair of socks for 'X' and another child in Year 1, who is learning spelling lists of 'fox' and 'box' and 'socks' so that he can correctly spell the different forms of this sound.*

From being a parent who was very sniffy about phonics since 'i learned to read without them' I am now a complete convert because I see what a more fundamental understanding of language it's given my DC (i have an older one who's been through the entire process).

You do have to get your head around the sound though - like 's' isn't 'ess' it's 'sss'. And 'x' isn't 'ex', it's more of a sort of quick 'ux' (i'm sure there's a better way of writing it) Until you get the sounds right, it doesn't make sense.

*caveat, my DC are not doing those specific examples, but they are doing that type of thing.

But the problem is the phonics "rules" don't apply to much of the English language. Along with learning the sound/letter combos they have to learn all the "tricky" words like "I" and "the" and "you"...

They do, though. If you think they don't then you haven't understood how "the phonics rules" work in English.

English is a much less phonetic language than most others but it does still have rules and we unconsciously know and apply them even when we have never come across a word before. If I type a total nonsense word, say, flumbiguous, hellanicky or tolongoloid you and I and the next person would be likely to pronounce them all in a very similar way despite the fact that none of us have ever heard those words spoken out loud.

Sorry I meant to say even if we have never formally been taught the rules of phonics.

It's true that some words fall outside of expected norms, but these are rare and they also tend to be very old words which are used with high frequency, like "women" for example.

It's about phonics. They want x to say 'cs' rather than 'ex' or 'z' because otherwise they are learning something that will confuse when they start school.

X is for xray

Bloody phonics= bad spelling.

Well, s makes the sound z a lot of the time too but nobody gets confused with that. Besides, xylophone, xenophobic etc aren't that likely for children to need to use. When was the last time you saw a xylophone in a primary school?

Exit is e/x/i/t - nice and easy

I much prefer the alphablocks explaination of 'X' not being able to talk until he's attached to someone eg 'example'

It's ok to teach children that some letters sounds are dependent on another letter. Children don't have to learn 'a is for Apple' etc

Children learn the most common sound first (so x makes a ks sound) - they will learn the ex for x-ray and z for xylophone sounds later.