Why does 'get squiggling' use 'aye, bee, cee' and alphablocks use 'ah, buh, kuh' ?

[peanutbuttersarnies]

Is it cos get squiggling isn't using the correct sounds as per the Phonics ? I have no idea, cos my eldest is only 3. But he is starting to be interested in letters. And I have been trying to tell him the alphablock type sounds. But then get squiggling comes on and confuses the situation!

Not getting into the argument about acronyms, and I understand about children trying to use both sounds and names in spelling and getting confused - although I think it's practically impossible to stop them learning the ABC song.

But it is true that in some cases letters do make a sound like the sound of their name not the phonics sound associated with them?

I don't think learnandsay has a Linguistics degree, just a dictionary. I also suspect, given the username, s/he isn't a fan of phonics anyway. The discussion has been highly entertaining nonetheless

Get Squiggling is utter, utter shit. Alphablocks is genius. The more I find out about how children are taught to read at school nowadays, the more brilliant Alphablocks seems.

As discussed above, the Alphablocks address each other by name (eg C pronounced "see") but make their pure sounds (eg "k" not "kuh") which incidentally is tricky for native English speakers to accomplish especially on vowels.

Letters never make sounds they only represent them in writing

They do in Alphablocks.

I don't know how to break this to you but Alphablocks are ...cartoons ... a person made the sounds

I think Get Squiggling is brilliant

DD1 is really into drawing, and she loves it.

It has even got pencil refuser DD2 to do zigzags and various shapes.

I'm not as familiar with the Get Squiggling - Letters, admittedly.

But they both love the song (5 & 3).

I love alphablocks too. It's so bonkers, and yet makes perfect sense.

learnandsay contends that letters say their names in some words ...

I imagine she sees this as a reason to teach letter names ...I asked for examples of words where consonants represented their letter names and she responded with RSPCA, UN and TFL

u-bend, s-bend, u-turn, t-shirt and the like.

keep trying you might get lucky

heh?

Those are all compound words though. There aren't any simple words that I can think of, where the consonants represent their letter names.

the letter describes the shape

Ceiling.

The in ceiling represents the sound /s/

the represents the sound /ee/

s-ee not "C"

I feel like I am in a strange universe - really, NSPCC and RSPCA are words now????

I is not a word where the letter uesed says its name, not its sound.

In phonics children learn that the letter i can be code for a short /i/ sound or a long /igh/ sound.

Really - children do get this. They pick it up surprisingly quickly at times too. Some take a little longer to learn all their sounds, but they get there.

I know that, I'm playing.