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Jolly Phonics

32 replies

pumyin · 24/03/2008 15:00

Can anyone enlighten me on Jolly Phonics? I am particularly interested in the actions that accompany the phonetic alphabet and obtaining some resources to teach my 3½ year old. I have searched and cannot find anything about this. I know that this is often taught during a child's pre-school year and "a" involves ants!

OP posts:
Elkat · 27/03/2008 10:46

As long as you follow your child's leads, then you are not being pushy. It is pushy if you force this on your child, but it is not pushy if you follow up your child's interests and questions. I think some parents fail to see this distinction because their children are not interested, and so they assume that all children are not interested, which of course is not the case!

My daughter started showing an interest in written words when she was about 2 3/4, so we got her the jolly phonics books. I just put them on the bookshelf and let her bring them to me. At first, we just did the single letter sounds (Until she was over 3 1/2), but it was only ever a game - she would spot the letter sounds she knew out and about and would point them out and do the actions. I never told her she had to do reading or anything like that, just waited for her to bring the books to me.

She is 4.5 now, and is quite a good little reader. I still follow the same policy, I put the appropriate books on her bookshelf and wait for her to pick them up... Sometimes she goes months without reading, other times she wants to read three or four books a day. Its up to her. When she starts school in September, she will have a very solid foundation from which to work, and what's more, because she has driven all of this, she has a love for reading and I have not had to force it on her. I have only ever facilitated her desire to learn. To me, this is the best foundation I can give my child.

The key thing is to let your child drive it, and keep it fun!
HTH

keevamum · 27/03/2008 10:54

I taught DD1 Jolly Phonics and she was able to read and write at 3. It was good in a way as she became a voracious reader who would then stay in bed reading until 8 am. Lovely!! Down side she was thoroughly bored in her reception year just waiting for her peers to catch up....not sure whether to bother with DD2.

MNersanonymous · 27/03/2008 13:59

Not sure what to do with my ds (2.9) next. He is so keen on letters and seems to want to learn to spell things and read. He's just started wanting to write letters the last week.

He knows his upper and lower case letters by name and all but 3 or 4 of the sounds. If he continues to want to learn this sort of thing what do I do next? I've been spelling his name and other people's names but I have no idea how to blend sounds for him so just spell the letter sounds or the names for him. Does this matter or should I look into phonics?

And before anyone accuses me of hothousing, it's absolutely driven by him.

vikingqueen · 20/05/2008 00:11

You can listen to the sounds here
www.educationtakeaway.com/shop/pc/viewPrd.asp?idcategory=69&idproduct=12

sillybut · 20/05/2008 07:40

I will be teaching DD to read at home. I've seen how badly the education system can fail. I went to a school where some children could barely read when they left at 16. If my mum had't taught me I might well have been one of them

GrapefruitMoon · 20/05/2008 07:49

hmc, I listen to children read at school and you can tell which children joined the school late and didn't do Jolly Phonics at their old school - they are a lot less confident at trying new words - don't seem to know how to go about it really... Probably matters less if a child is v. bright/naturally good at reading but for many children it is such a useful system....

chelltune · 23/06/2008 07:39

www.educationtakeaway.co.uk stocks the Jolly phonics range.

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