Phonics..almost 4 year old struggling with blending but my daughter wants to learn more sounds, is this ok?

[Worriedmumofone1]

As the title suggests.. she’s going into reception soon and has an interest in learning the sounds of letters. We’re only a week in so I appreciate oral blending may take some time to ‘click’. But she wants to move onto more sounds.. (we’ve done SATPIN) is that ok even though she hasn’t grasped blending?

100% agree.

Focus on the life skills.

If she wants to learn to read, then read to her! Read lots of books that she enjoys, go through a few simple words with her.
The obsession with phonics is bizarre. Yes, it might be the best way to teach a group of 30 4 years olds how to learn to read. That doesn't mean it's the best or easiest way to help an individual learn, especially one to one.

@mathanxietyBright dc don’t need to be force fed phonics though. They pick up words and read them as you go along. It’s doesn’t need to be formal, but both DDs did informal phonics at nursery. Just sitting down with similar interested dc. These dc were ready to have a go and were reading pretty well by end of YR. We seem obsessed with holding curious dc back.

I'm not keen on the new sounds at all (well m and n anyway), I used to listen to readers and the new sounds make things much harder for them IMO. Nnnnn turns into unnnnnn and mmmm turns into ummm or oommmm - and try sounding out the word 'mum' using them! mmmm uuuu mmm sounds absolutely nothing like mum! muh, uh, muh sounds much more like it. It really put me off listening to readers constantly correntcing and trying to make mmm and nnn work tbh.

It's normal to learn the phonic sounds before you learn to blend the letters though, DS new the letter sounds before school but couldn't blend till after Christmas.

Early years people: what are they taught wrong that has to be undone?

Not an early years person but ime it’s getting the sounds wrong. S should be sss, not sss and so on.

You're kidding! Muhuhmuh sounds like mum?!😀

😅😅😅

Not “ess”, that should read.

If they're a child interested in learning before school, they're probably intelligent enough that a lack of pure sounds or other slight differences to the current educational trends won't matter. Phonics is fabulous at getting entire classes reading but plenty of children in the past learnt to read very successfully without it too. Of course we should be focusing on skills like zipping up a coat but it is perfectly possible to do both. My pre-schooler is months older now than my other child was when she started school. It's not surprising that a bright child who has had to wait until 4.5 to start school would show an interest in reading, especially if they see those around them doing it frequently.

As a teacher, the things I see mistaught that make me wince are names without an initial capital letter (why?!) or children being taught to write in block capitals.

Can they orally blend? As this is phonics phase 1 which nursery is expected to teach and do at this stage. If you say c-a-t can she put the sounds together and say cat?

you introduce as many sounds as you like this way - sh-EE-p, c-ar etc etc

also can they orally segment so the opposite cat broken down into the sounds c-a-t

Agree with the pure sounds other people have mentioned

what?! You must speak very strangely to be putting ‘uh’ sounds in the middle of all your words. ‘Muhuhmumuh, duhaduh!’ If you say ‘mum’ slowly, you hear mmm uhhhh mmm, which is exactly how children are taught to say the sounds. M definitely shouldn’t be ‘ummmm!’

OP - in reception they’ll learn about 4 sounds a week and move on with everyone even those who aren’t blending. So I think it’s fine. As previously suggested you could just do lots of oral blending - ‘go and get your c-oa-t’ / this gives practice of the blending skill without the cognitive overload of also trying to remember which letter makes which sounds.

its fine to do a bit of phonics with kids before they start school, it’s also fine if you don’t and leave it to the teachers.

My child started school reading fluently, and writing her name in block capitals. I had NEVER written her name in capitals (other than on forms which required it), or suggested it. She struggled with wielding a pencil, and could only really do straight lines. She knew both capitals and lower case, so decided for herself that writing her name in capitals was much easier, as there was then only one curve.

She did learn to write the lower case letters once she started school, and replaced each letter with the lower case one as she mastered it - which looked a bit silly until she'd learned them all!

As a Reception teacher, if you are going to teach her. Do it right. You need to be careful on pronunciation of some sounds! You may know all about the ‘schwa’ that can occur but if you don’t it’s when a sound has an ‘uh’ sound after it and it makes blending so much harder. (Eg M is ‘mm’ not ‘muh’)YouTube will have some videos that explain so you can hear it! Lots of children who have been taught at home (and in nurseries!!) come in with this and unlearning/unteaching it is so much harder than just teaching from scratch).

In my ideal scenario the child would come to me really secure with phase one listening skills - rhyming, intitial sounds, oral blending (hearing it) and know none of the sounds already!! Obviously that never happens but don’t worry too much about teaching her phonics and focus on the fundamental listening skills and then phonics is so much easier for her!

DS2 knew all the letter sounds when he was 2 - as we watched the Jolly Phonics youtube videos with his older brother.

Try doing robot talking to encourage blending. Like: oh look there's a c-a-t cat sitting on the wall. Let's go and sit on the g-r-a-ss grass etc.

Thanks all. I’m not concerned about the pronunciation of letter sounds I’ve taken the care to make myself aware of how to do it right. Same with letters, I know teaching them to write in capitals isn’t good. My daughter writes her the first letter in her name in capital followed by lower case for the other three (nice and easy), all with the correct way to form them too.

I was premature in my worry about blending - she’s picked it up today both orally and written, like a champ! Very proud 😊

100% this. My DS 0-3 nursery use an app to put "observations" on for parents to see. When he was 2yo, just turned 2yo, they uploaded an observation stating "we attempted to play a number matching game with Henry and his friends today, Henry really struggled with this and needed lots of support from his key worker". They had Ladybirds with the numbers 1-5 on, and then ladybirds with the corresponding dots like dice. They expected my 2yo child to be able to match the number to the amount of dots 😳 absolutely ridiculous. Some children will be able to do that I suppose, but my son would rather climb the furniture or run around with his arms out being an aeroplane 😅

Do you know - blending isn’t needed if dc know the word and remember it! In the good old days we had 120 breakthrough words. DD learnt them in YR. Used them with some phonics. She just knew Mum! Plus 119 other high frequency words. So glad my dc are older!

My 2.5 year old absolutely loves song of sounds on YouTube (it's a phonics scheme so trustworthy pronunciation) . My 7yo learned to read CVC words from the beginning starting with SATPIN but if your DD is interested in learning the sounds then go with it! It won't hurt her in any way. Blending is the harder skill so in a way it makes sense to leave it til later

So much gatekeeping over the "right" way to learn to read... how do you think people did it before phonics was a thing?!

Big picture here: the kids who have been "taught wrong" are the ones who have parents who help with their education and supplement their learning at home, so they're not going to end up behind, all things being equal, are they.

My eldest could multiply at 4, couldn't understand phonics until he turned 7in P2, was absolutely baffled and likely dyslexic but can now read fairly fluently and has amazing understanding going into P3

My youngest is 4, can count to 20 but no interest in addition etc but knows all her letter sounds and can write her name.

We've done nothing different, same nursery, read with both, do numbers etc day to day with both. Kids just learn as it suits them at that age so I'd say just be led by hwr

@Worriedmumofone1 ignore the PP saying she's too young, let them play, blah blah blah. It's not like you're chaining her to a desk while all her friends play outside!

You know your DD and sounds like she's probably a bit like mine. Mine started pointing out letters in the bedtime stories, asking me what words were etc etc and already knew all the 'proper' phonics sounds so I decided just to teach her.

There's a Julia Donaldson book called Bob Bug and Other stories which are all just stories made of three letter words. She picked up blending really quickly.

You can also get the 'pink level' books from the early readers section at the library.

I’m a teacher and I have a child who has just completed reception. You really do not need to worry! it’s rare to find children blending before they’ve even started school! She is ahead already. I would personally take the pressure off or the worry out of it.