DS loves the phonics they do at nursery - suggestions to do at home?

[drspouse]

Just that really! He's just 4, so school in September. He's very poor at motor skills so can only just trace letters if you hold his hand so I'm working on other things than "writing" (he can't draw much beyond scribbling either) but he can tell you a lot of letters and tell you about some sounds in words.
We do the "what else starts with m" etc. which he's starting to get.
Thanks!

Work on his motor skills. He has lots of time to develop that but it is important for school.
I would be less fussed about the phonics, but if he likes it go ahead. You could get him making letters out of playdough, drawing pictures of words starting with the same letter, magnetic letters on the fridge.

search on here for mrz fantastic pre-writing skills list
you really dont need to do tracing letters
today our preschoolers have been developing muscles by swinging on the monkey bars and the rope ladder
also building with lego, and playing with play dough

We do some motor skills activities and I can't keep him away from the Lego, but his attention span for many of the sitting down activitIes is very limited e.g. playdough he can't make much so loses interest, same with drawing, he'll happily do a scribble an hour so it's not that he won't do things, he just does them for a very short time!

He can't yet climb a climbing frame, but I'm not convinced you need THAT much upper arm strength for the level of fine motor skills he's working on, especially considering how short a time he does them for.

I've found mrz's list and we can try some of those though the ones we do already are again short lived, but he WILL sit still for stories and listening (or at least he won't run off!) and I don't see why we should do all activities that are hard/he doesn't really succeed at, and skip the ones he actually likes.
Anyway nursery have told me they are working on spotting rhymes just now so we did a bit of that in our bedtime read.

Iora he can't draw anything recognisable though is happy to attempt a scribble of anything, he wouldn't be able to make a letter out of playdough.

Our nursery recommends the Finger Phonics books - they learn the phonics but also can trace the letter with their finger for the direction ready for writing. Can also get a book and CD to sing some of the phonics songs (all v short and he recognised from nursery).

Look at phonics play online - lots of printable stuff so cheap and cheerful

Great thanks!
They've been doing rhyme recently so we've been working on rhyming books we have and nursery rhymes, it's all very basic and he thinks up some truly random wrong rhymes sometimes but he's enjoying it.

If you look up "Letters and Sounds" Phase 1, that will give you basically the phonics curriculum for this age. There are lots of suggestions for games and activities. If he is really secure at the phase 1 skills (discriminating sounds, rhyme and alliteration, oral blending and segmenting) he will be in a great position to learn to read once he starts school.

My 3 year old is really into it too, constantly asking how to spell things. He really loves these foam letters we got for the bath (big tub from Sainsbury's), they stick on the wall and we spell out words with them. He also really loves the alphablocks game on the cbeebies app!

I think we aren't quite at the spelling stage but I do like the idea of gymnastics actually.
Will also check out Letters and Sounds.