Can any primary teachers or parents with similar experience please advise re phonics?

[Ophuchi]

DD is not yet of school age however she is picking up 'sight reading' very well. She also knows the letters of the alphabet (uppercase and lowercase) as Ay, Bee, Cee etc.

I gather from a quick look in the Education boards that this isn't necessarily a good thing, and that she would be much better off knowing the sounds that letters make before learning to blend words phonetically. Recently she has started to point out that 'Ay is for apple' and 'Zed is for Zebra' and so on.

Does it sound as if she is ready to learn phonics?

Should I begin to teach her at home or is this something best left to the professionals?

If you recommend teaching phonics to a toddler, what resources would you use?

Thanks in advance for replies.

You haven't caused any problems by teaching her the letter name first, though. I say this because a friend of mine panicked when someone told her that it's useful to focus on the sounds that letters make rather than their name, and spent over £100 on 'teaching phonics' materials!

At 3, my dd understood very well than the name of the letter was 'ay' and the sounds it usually makes is 'a'; she's now in reception and flying through phonics.

You don't need to buy anything

Thanks for your replies. I think Jolly Phonics will be the way to go with DD. She won't start school until she's 5 and a half and that's still a long way off when she's interested in reading now.

Thanks again for all your brilliant advice. Now, if only I could get her to sleep through the night I'd be all the way!

No you don't need to buy anything but the OP asked what resources she could use.
The OP's DD doesn't sound like she'll have any problems with the fact that the OP has taught her the names of letters. Many able, early readers can separate the two. It's just not good practice and can cause problems for many children.

I taught both my dds phonics before starting school. dd2 has just turned 4 and can read as a result, whilst dd1 is in year 1 and reading at year 3 level. I think they were both going to be early readers, regardless of what I was doing at home with them, but introducing phonics early certainly didn't do any harm.

It helped that I did feel fairly comfortable with phonics myself and how to pronounce the sounds. We purchased the jolly jingles book with cd, which is quite nice for showing you how to pronounce the sounds and the songs and actions are memorable.

We have some fridge magnets of high frequency words and dd2 likes to make 'silly sentences' and read them out loud. We also use the starfall website a lot. dd2 also enjoys reading the stories on Oxford owls and we have a set of the songbirds phonics stories. I know your dd will be at the stage of learning the sounds at the moment, but when she does start reading - the songbirds phonics are great.

Yes, I'll know better with DC2. However, DC2 might not show any interest at all. They are all so different.

Thanks princessglitter.

dd2 does use a combination of remembering high frequency words and applying her knowledge of phonics - which I think is fine, but I have noticed that as her phonic knowledge increases she understands that 'away' for example, contains the sound 'ay' and in the word 'they' 'ey' is pronounced in the same way for example.

That's great. I just think it's amazing how quickly they learn.

I know lovingthecoast but I'll repeat the OP doesn't need to buy anything certainly not a published programme. I'm sure she already has a pen and paper in the home and possibly some magnetic letters (useful but not essential)
Please Ophuchi don't go to the expense of buying the JP resources they aren't necessary and I'm saying that as someone who has taught JP since it was first published and did my training with Sue Lloyd the author.

Ok, yes I do have the magnetic letters which I used with my DNiece (6) in the holidays. DD is almost 20 months old but wouldn't put the letters in her mouth so we'd be ok with them. She'd be very happy for mum to write things out as she enjoys drawing with crayons very much.

I'm not suggesting you give her the letters but you could use them together to make words a sound at the time pushing them together to complete the words.

Yes, I see what you mean. I'll certainly give it a go once she's confident with all the sounds. Thank you.

and of course with magnetic letters you can pull words apart for spelling

Ds liked the alpha blocks games on the cbeebies website when he was relatively early in the phonics process.

As well as magnetic letters, my kids have all loved the foam ones for the bath. We used them a lot for basic phonics and recognising and writing their own names. We had some number ones too and as they got older (around 4 or 5) they quite enjoyed using them for basic maths too.

One word of warning though is to make sure you get lower case ones as Ive seen lots around that are all capital letters which should be avoided.

Is there any way of stopping those from going moudly or do you just replace eventually?

academy - we've had them for 4 years and they've not gone mouldy - but we don't put the lid on when they're wet.

A good sight reader will have an excellent memory, but, unless they have worked out the alphabetic code for themselves (which from what you say, your child does not seem to have done) they will at some stage have been TOLD what each word is by someone else when it is first encountered. This is not a sustainable strategy for reading and can leave some seemingly "good readers" floundering. I'd agree introducing your daughter to sound/letter correspondences is a great idea and in the long term will be much more fufilling for her as she will be able to work out what words are herself. And yes, I'd show her how to read by sounding out the words yourself so when she asks, work it out together. Get yourself a decent alphabetic code chart so that you are one step ahead!

Yes, we never pack them away whilst wet after making that mistake with the first set. Don't even pack them in a netting. Leave them out to dry.

Tbh, more often than not we just left them on the tiles until bathtime the following night. They came out the bath once a week when it was cleaned. I also found that soaking them in cold water and rubbing them all against one another helped to remove any scummy build up.

Nothing to add really, but www.phonicsplay.co.uk is another good website.

Ah, it's putting them in the net that's caused the problems. I may have to reinvest as I don't think I can face scraping mould off each one individually.

Thanks!

Thanks for all the replies, great tips about bath letters there.

RiversideMum - Is an alphabetic code chart just a poster with letters and corresponding objects beginning with that letter? Sorry, I'm new to all this!

Yes, she hasn't worked out the alphabetic code. Of course, she's not even 2 years old yet so she probably would figure it out for herself in time however because she's interested now I think introducing her to the sounds is a good idea.

I agree with you, I think she'll gain a lot of satisfaction from figuring out words by herself.

Take a look at Teeny Reading Seeds aimed at pre school children

Thank you mrz, I will.