Does your nursery teach letters/phonics?

[MamanPig]

Just curious really.
DD's been coming home sounding out her letters. I thought they were a bit early for this?
She's in "Nursery Room" which covers age range 3-school age.

Yes. Both my dc started doing phonics at preschool. It always seemed to be done in a fun and relaxed way and they loved doing all the sounds.

Anyone else?
It's just that I thought they only started to learn to read at primary school ... or doesn't thsi count?

My 4 year old does phonics and sounds at nursery, in fact yesterday he got his first piece of homework which was to sound out S and A and write the letteres out.

It is a while since my DD was in nursery. It was a private nursery, not a pre school - she left there in July 2006/ They did no formal learning of letters, phonics or numbers, and no reading either (other thn having stories read to them.)

There is no a new preschool at DD's school - wasn't there when DD started - and I know that they do do some formal introductary work to phonics and numbers, and the children can have reading books sent home. It is done on an individual basis though depending ont he child, not forced.

despite DD doing no formal learning of phonics or reading before starting school she did now her letter sounds and picked up reading very quickly from day 1 at school, aged 4y5m, and ovetook the child who started the school able to read withint he first yearor so. So - formal learning before school doesn't always mean they will be ahead of reading.

DS has just turned 4. They do some phonics at nursery (attached to primary school) but it's in a fun way and he loves it. They do letters for show and tell.

He didn't do anything like it at pre-school before this and I think he's about the right age to enjoy it now.

When I taught a Nursery class a couple of years ago, the Reception teacher, who was in charge of the Foundation Stage (so the Nursery and Rec classes) requested that I didn't teach them the letters or to read etc. But, I did do Phhase 1 of the Letters and Sounds phonics programme. This was all about distinguishing between sounds in the environment, rhyming, things beginning with the same sound, initial sounds of objects, and then finally blending and segmenting sounds in words. So I might say "I'm looking at the b - a - g. What am I looking at?" and they would say "bag." So they learnt what the actual initial sounds were, and did quite a lot of work on letter sounds, but I never showed them what any of the letters looked like. This started when they moved up to Reception, and they were pretty much all ready to start reading straight away. I thought it was a good approach actually and didn't feel that I should be teaching them to read or anything. A couple of parents did question it, but I think most were pretty happy with what we were doing.

Thanks for all the replies. Makes me feel a bit less perturbed that DD's nursery is teaching them phonics already, as that's what everyone else seems to be doing.

DD attends two different preschools (one private one charity) and afaik it's all very informal. The private one sometimes has jolly phonics songs playing, and they did a bit of 'writing' with her. The charity one is almost entirely child led and I don't think they've done any, but if a child brings it up they will build on it (Eg DD learned to write a few letters so they are encouraging it)

I'd be shocked if they sent home reading books in preschool tbh.

DS attends the preschool part of a quite large nursery. They started doing Jolly Phonics there with the Upper School kids a year or so ago, but found that the Lower School kids were picking it up from the older ones... so they started playing the songs to them too.

So they all know the songs off by heart now (as do I !)

My dd (3) started nursery in Sept.She came home the other day and said "cup starts with cu cu cu.Its on the table.Table starts with tay tay tay "I thought she had issues-turns out they're learning phonics!