Recommend some phonetics resources please

[Baconand]

Can anyone recommend some phonetics resources for clueless parents please? DH and I are older parents and very conscious it’s taught differently now to “our day”.

DD is just 3 but nursery advise she’s a good year ahead in terms of speech/understanding (but she can’t run/jump oso she’s not good at everything! 😂). She’s desperately interested in letters/words/books so would like to get off to a good start with phonetics, but literally no idea where to begin.

She’s a September born so won’t go to school until she’s a few days off 5 so don’t want to fill the next 2 years unhelpfully teaching her badly for school to undo later. She will be at private nursery not preschool until then. Obviously I will talk to them too but she doesn’t start in their preschool room until Easter and in the toddler room they don’t really do anything that structured understandably.

Do you know which primary school you would like her to attend? If so, you could ask them which phonics scheme they use? My DD's school uses Read Write Inc, so I bought the starter pack which came with a parent's guide, flashcards etc. Nowadays you should teach kids the 'pure sounds' instead of the alphabet. They use these to blend the words when they are first starting to read. Think 'mmm' rather than 'em' for an M.
There are loads of resources on YouTube too. Good luck!
I'm in the same situation with DD2 at the moment. Advice that I've learnt from DD1 is little and often and don't neglect writing in favour of reading (when you're a bit further along).

Alphablocks on Cbeebies is really good. If it's fallen off the iPlayer, there may be some episodes on YouTube. They're only about 10 minutes long, so you could do one a day and then look at writing and sounding out one letter for another 10 minutes.

Teach Your Monster App is based on the national curriculum synthetic phonics and is great.

Work on pre-reading skills promoting phrenological awareness like identifying works that rhyme and the first sounds at the start of a word.

*phonological not phrenological!

This is a really good channel that I use with my ds now 4. He uses this at school too https://youtube.com/@lettersandsoundsforhomeand9824

I would just carry on reading to her and talking while playing and leave the phonics to nursery or school.

I think you have misunderstood- I don’t want to teach her myself. But I don’t want to be reading her alphabet books and using the wrong sounds etc. I want to be consistent when I do things with how it will be taught, that’s all.

We learnt the alphabet letters, not sounds. But I don’t want to be doing A is for Apple if it should be something else.

Thank you, will look at that.

I can’t get her to engage with Alphablocks at all at the moment. She prefers the numbers one. But I will keep trying!

Thank you. We think she will go to our village school (guaranteed a place as we are the nearest house and not oversubscribed) so I will try them but I don’t know anyone there yet and feels a bit awkward to contact them this early. It’s tiny, only 48 kids 5-11 and everyone knows everyone (I’m sure we will eventually but it’s a bit intimidating as we’ve just moved in).

Reading eggs app. I'm a home educator and have used this app with 4 children. It's excellent. The maths version is Mathseeds and that is also excellent. You can get both under one subscription and it's well worth the money.

Great, I’ll get that app, sounds very useful and just what I need.

I don’t like feeling clueless, I saw someone writing about Grapheme’s recently and I haven’t a clue what they are in about. I just want to be in the right page with it all so she gets off to a good start.

I went to school at 4 and my mum says I could already read well but she maintains I just did it by myself. Not sure I believe that but I know my academic success was heavily due to my reading ability so I really want to get it right for DD. My brother really struggled with words and it has held him back hugely. We are chalk and cheese (but he has many other strengths).

Honestly I wouldn't.
Let pre school and school deal with it. You don't need to teach her.

I don’t want to teach her. I just want to understand how it is taught.

My husband taught himself to read at that age. It’s rare but it does happen. My DD also after a basic introduction to phonics taught herself to read. She’d memorised her books anyway and would stay up late at night word matching and teaching herself until she could read things way beyond her phonetic knowledge. We’d come into her room in the mornings and find a dozen books all over the floor.

There isn’t anything wrong with teaching her if you educate yourself. I’m a school governor and parental support makes a huge difference. If she’s ready and keen go for it.

If you look up jolly phonics on YouTube that has little songs with the letter sounds so you’ll know the correct sound. If she’s keen to write then please also look into letter formation, I know at DDs school they’re keen to ensure children are forming the letters properly from the start as it will help them as they get older when they learn to write joined up and need to write quickly. There’s dry-wipe practice books you can get with letters to trace which she might be interested in as she gets closer to being at school.

Also, school are more likely to refer to it as ‘phonics’ that ‘phonetics’. And as far as I understand grapheme is just a written representation of a sound, so maybe they were just using a big word when a small one would do?

The sounds are taught the same as the alpha blocks.

So I think there is an episode.

Maybe the first one. Where they just go through the sounds.

So that is the best episode but not for her, but for you.

So you know what sounds she needs to know.

Once you know the sounds. Like others have said dont neglect the writing.

But whatever er medium you use. Then it will be the same sounds.

In reception the letters are usually taught in a certain order.

satpin etc. If you search online you can find the order.

But as soon as they know the first 3-6 phonics sounds they can start blending simple words.
E.g. sat. Tap. Pin. Sit etc

‘Teach your monster to read’ is actually really good fun too 😊

We made the decision to leave phonics and reading lessons until the school taught our son - we just read for fun at home two books each night and used the regular way of saying letters for the Alphabet. He's one of the strongest in the class at reading (just started year one, his teachers own words)- I still feel maybe it was better not to confuse the schools teaching? At least it seemed to work well for him.

If you look for speech therapists teaching the sounds on YouTube it will give you a good example of how to say each sound phonetically. The Peachie Speechie has short videos for each sound. Just search e.g. 'peachie speechie k sound'.

They are geared towards how to say each sound for children with speech sound disorders but I feel the most accurate example I've come across online if you just want to hear the sounds as they should be phonetically.

We have used the ReadWriteInc method - this was used both in Pre-school & in infants (so far).
As an older parent myself, I have found this the most useful. You can buy the introduction pack on Amazon and there are also you-tube clips, which teachers created during Lock-down.
This method has introduced my child to phonics/letters (she was never interested, as preferred numbers!) and within a a short time was reading.

Second this, Reading Eggs has been great for my children, my oldest learnt to read with it and my youngest is learning now, and also loves the mathseeds bit too (and has become obsessed with numbers as a result!)

Good afternoon. I have a son. He is 4 years old. We were engaged in phonetics on this site, now we are playing other games and he really likes it. I hope I helped someone))

wunderkiddy.com/category/1-2-years