Phonics question.

[itsonlysubterfuge]

DD is really enjoying learning sounds. She's going round the house saying things like "ha- ha- house" "ba-ba-ball" However when she gets to words like treat she says "tra-tra-treat" or "sh-sh-shout" Should I correct her so she can learn the correct beginning? I think for example with treat, it's okay to correct her to just the t sound, but with sh, it might confuse her to say the s sound instead of sh. What do you think I should do?

For shout she should be saying sh anyway - that is one of the phonics they will be taught in school.

To be honest I think it really depends on how old she is?

Thank you for answering. She is 3.

When our DS was two he had 'Boots' waterproof suit with a capital 'B' on it. We made the mistake of telling him letter NAMES and not 'sounds' - but it WAS over thirty years ago!

He would see a GB plate on a car and go "Beeee"! More problematical was when he said "Why" for "wine"!

So keep sounds as accurate and 'pure' at you can - so, 'h-h-h-house' and 'b-b-b-ball'.

'sh', 'ch' and 'th' will be taught - so I think you can probably safely explain that SOME sounds need TWO letters to make the sound.

As a historic aside, thirty years ago when I was first a TA, 'tr' WAS taught as a 'blend', and I spent hours with boys going 'tr-track - train - truck - trip' etc. Nowadays it is taught as two sounds: 't'-'r'.

Cbeebies Alphablocks is an accurate model of how to do it:

www.bbc.co.uk/cbeebies/shows/alphablocks

And if you want a book that will serve you and DD for many years to come:

An inexpensive and easy to use book, that can encourage children with reading, spelling and writing, and really help them to understand Phonics, is reviewed in the MN Book Reviews section. Just search ‘Phonics’ and my name.

Your dd is doing really well.

Don't correct "sh" to "s" as "sh" is the sound that we hear at the beginning of "shout".

For a 3 year old, I wouldn't correct "tr" at the beginning of treat. She's doing really well to be able to discriminated those sounds within the word. As she gets older, especially when she starts writing, you can praise her for hearing the "tr" and then ask her to listen really carefully and see if she can hear the 2 different sounds that make up "tr".

I can remember one of mine at three walking around the house saying 'sh, sh, sh, itttttt!' so you're doing better than I was

Thank you for letting me know, I will definitely check them out Ferguson.

trouble she's picked it up on her own and shown a great interest, I'm not making her sit down and learn them. I just want her to learn the correct way so it's not more difficult for her down the road.