Anyone elses children using Jolly Phoneics?

[Nutjob]

My ds is learning to read and write at school using a system called Jolly Phoneics (sp?), is/has anyone elses children learnt this way? If so what did/do you think of it? Also, are there any retailers who sell JP stuff so I can help him at home?

From the bits and pieces he has bought home from school, it seems to work on the basis that every letter sound has an action to go with it - for example, the sound 'P' is accompanied by imitated puffing out a candle, and the sound 'i' is a mouses squeak. Seems quite fun, and ds is certainly learning quickly.

Ds school seem to use it in conjunction with teaching traditionally. I've seen the merchandise in a shop near us called Formative Fun, I think they are a chain.

You can buy the videos at Ottikars the booksellers

My daughter has made great strides using jolly phonics at her school. We moved to a new area in september and the old school hadn't done anything like it. She could barely recognise her name at the beginning of term, but she has done so well since starting jp. I think I saw them in the Early Learning Centre recently.

My 2 daughters started Jolly Phonics in October and both love it. The 4 year old is reading simple books now and is well away with her reading. My 3 yr old just thinks it's great fun.
I am able to borrow the accompanying videos from their school library and the teachers have been happy to lend me their resource books over the weekend for the girls. They are great. Huge cardboard books with vivid pictures and grooved letters the children can trace with their fingers.
I did look at buying the kit but it was very expensive and now having seen how they fly through their sounds etc I am glad I didn't make that investment.
I also volunteer to listen to reading one afternoon a week and that has probably been the best thing as the teachers have spent time explaining everything in detail to me and I guess I have become hooked and it's had a flow on effect at home.
Most of the children at the girls school are speaking English as a second language and the JF system works well for them too though I know a lot of their Mums think it is totally bizarre!

DS2 learnt this way and read far quicker than ds1 who did letterland. He is now nearly 6 and can decode words phonetically- sometimes better than ds1 (9) who has a reading age of 13 (sorry if sounds garbled!). ELC do some books and games, I bought the videos from Amazon- they were a big hit and are now in use by dd. I bought the workbooks from Amazon too but we never really had time to use them- they do go through letters quickly, in year 1 they are now doing jolly grammer, also fun. Only annoying thing is that nursery of same school still uses letterland instead-ridiculous.

This sounds really interesting. From what age can you start using it?

Nutjob - there is a book called 'Phonics Workbook', which explains the scheme for teachers and parents. It is quite pricey, (£20 I think), but your library may have it, or can order it for a small fee - that's what we've done.

I'm very impressed with JP too - ds1 learned to read using Letterland, and did very well with that, but ds2 is using JP, which is going well too. The emphasis is on the sounds the letters make, which is the key to learning to read phonetically.

I am very pleased with the 'Finger Phonics' books - the trace the letter things that tilba described so well. Again, they have these in our library, as they are pretty pricey to buy, (c. £5 for a book with 6 letters in, I think). But it means children can learn correct letter formation at the same time as letter recognition, even before they can control a pencil well. Many children, esp. boys, are not ready to do a lot of writing until they are 5, but they can still learn to read, and with these books to form letters well too.

Katierocket - I taught my two letter recognition at age 2, by introducing just one or two letters each week. By the time they were 2.5 they knew all the letter sounds 100%. Jolly Phonics is idea for this sort of approach.

Thanks for your messages everyone, think I'll check out Amazon for the videos, as ds has mentioned watching them at school. Must say seems like a really good system to me, as my ds has gone from a little boy who would sit no longer than 2 minutes with a book or a pen, to one who loves to show off how much he can read, write and understand, and will happily sit with a piece of paper and a pen for long periods of time.

I taught my oldest daugther to read using this method. Her reading and writing improved by leaps and bounds. I have used this method with all my children and recommended it to others.

I bought a couple of the books from elc and a lotto game for the jolly ohnics system, haven't used them yet DD1 has just started school so I was waiting a little for them to introduce the system to her and then use the stuff I had as reinforcement

We tried but it didn't work to well with his BSL

Info Here
\link{http://www.jollylearning.co.uk/Their website}
Online at Tescos

Their website

We bought the whole Jolly Phonics books set from ELC. They are very good - the girls have taken to them very well.

Tesco have a good range for good prices too.

that looks really good.

Maybe a daft question - I'm 99.99% certain that DS1's school doesn't use this method.....would it completely confuse him if I got some of the Jolly Phonics stuff and went through it with him at home?

I don't think it does, I think its good for them to gets lots of exposure to reading, letters and words but some believe its best to stick with one method. Might depend on child and how they pick things up

Queenofquotes, no, it won't confuse your son. Buying some of the JP materials will be a good investment. Do you know whether they teach any phonics at school? It's important that your child learns to read using 'synthetic phonics', which is what the Jolly Phonics materials are.

It doesn't depend on the child as to which approach to use. Teaching children to memorise 'whole-words' is setting them up to fail. If you want to know more about this have a look at the forums on the following websites, possibly the best thing you ever do!

www.rrf.org.uk/
www.syntheticphonics.com/

My ds is using this too. I've bought some of the workbooks from ELC and Borders for £1.50 each. Each book covers 6 sounds has activities and shows the action to go with it. I think it sounds great fun. ELC had lots of games , videos and song books to go with it.

My son has learned to read using Jolly Phonics. It is fantastic. I taught him to read myself using it and six months ago I knew nothing about teaching reading, so believe me, anyone can do it.

I got most of my stuff from Amazon but some of it is in ELC and now Tesco's.

I bought my son the videos (which he loves), the Finger Phonics books (good for feeling the shape of the letters when learning to write them), the workbooks and the readers. I bought myself the Handbook (fantastic) and the Teaching Video - but perhaps most useful of all was the JP Steps. These are on the JP website on the messageboard, back in May 2003, a post called something like "JP Steps"). Very useful - and free!

Because he has problems with his speech, he found some of the multi-syllable words in the readers difficult to pronounce. Also, I would like there to have been more readers - but I found some compatible ones on the Ruth Miskin Literacy website - and he has enjoyed those. The RML ones are quite affordable if you don't mind black and white. I wasn't sure what my son would think but he didn't mind at all!

hth - whenever I come on mumsnet I always try and post something if someone has asked about reading - and I always praise Jolly Phonics. It is so good!