Don't understand Phonics - help!

[Undercovamutha]

DD is 3.5 and in nursery class at school. She has started to learn to write her name and is very keen to learn more, but I am getting totally confused about the phonics system the school use.

My Main sticking point is the fact that the phonics system doesn't 'work' with my DDs name. The first word she has learnt is her name, which begins with a vowel. So, for example, say her name is Edith - she has learnt that it starts with an E, which she obviously pronounces as Ee rather than Eh. However according to phonics (as I understand it) you teach E to sound like 'eh' (as in elephant).

So I told her that an E sounds like Eh, and she said 'no it doesn't it sounds like Ee, like my name'. I wasn't sure what to say to that tbh! So it seems that right from the word go, it is contradictory.

Hope you can understand what I'm talking about (not easy to explain in writing!). Any advice?

When we do phonics at school we teach the children both the letter name and the sound it makes. So, with e/E it works quite well.

I think the key is that she learns that letters sometimes make more than one sound, depending on how they are used in words.

However she is only 3y and still very young to be learning all this.

Yes, you can tell her both the sound the letter makes and the letter name.
All the vowels are usually pronounced in the phonics way, but are also sometimes pronounced using the name of the letter. So 'a' as in Alfie or apron, 'e' as in Ella or Edith.
I hadn't noticed this until I read it in the Letterland book.

Thanks. Just wanted to make sure I wasn't telling her something different to what the school was telling her.

Hulababy - it is very young to be learning this I agree. But round here they start school at 3, and she is really keen!

My DD's name has a letter C which has a soft sound, so I have told her it sometimes has a k sound and sonetines the S sound.

Many names use what synthetic phonics teacher's call the Advanced or Complex Code.
Your child is still at the Basic or Simple code stage. The English Alphabet code is very complicated- learn about its structure here:

www.ourrighttoread.com/englishalphabet.html
A brief guide to the English Alphabet Code.

Sound out your child's name: ee/d/i/th
'2 letters, or more, make one sound' is one of the 4 characteristics of the code. It happens because there are only 26 alphabet letters but approx. 44 sounds, which we need to represent in our writing.

HTH

It is very complicated for a child this young to understand. Phonics teaching is layered as children get older. I don't teach phonics as I'm an upper junior teacher, so someone else probably has a better idea, but basically there are something like 42 sounds that are taught, some of which are digraphs (two letters making one sound), such as th, sh etc. My daughter is the same age as yours and we have told her that 'oo' is usually pronounced as in poo, loo, toot. We haven't started on the soot way yet! Your little girl will probably accept that E can be pronounced e as in Edith and e as in egg or even e as in the. Just tell her the variety of ways and have a little joke with her about the silly English language.

Fanjolina - its a bit complicated for adults to understand too! I think parents should go to primary school for a few weeks shortly before their child starts! I just want to be careful not to contradict what the school are doing. Will have a good read up on it.