Read, Write Inc - how can I continue where preschool left off?

[BayLeaves]

DS is 3.5 and would be starting Reception this September but we are moving abroad to a Switzerland where kids don't start school until age 6, and wouldn't be taught in English anyway.

He has started doing phonics at preschool with the Read, Write Inc and seems to be enjoying it or at least absorbing it! To my surprise he's learnt to identify and write the letters m, a, s and t.

I would love to continue teaching him at home as I think it's a shame he's got off to such a great start just to stop again for a whole 2 years before starting fresh in a new language. I don't want to push him but it would be nice if he could learn to read a basic level of English before he starts learning German.

I have found some flashcards on Amazon and a couple of brief Youtube videos but I am still left wondering how teachers manage to make this 'fun' for kids! Any ideas? Thanks!

Lurking not so silently to see suggestions - I love Read Write Inc

Orchard Games do some great phonics and letters based games and puzzles.

Rhyming games are good too. My DS is on a different programme (Letterland) but learnt most of his phonics through songs.

Just some thoughts!

Don't know RWI but just to say:

Are you planning on staying in Switzerland long term?

Learning to read in German (you didn't say if it would be German?) is easier and quicker than learning to read in English. And once people are fluent in (reading) German, they usually find it easy to learn to read in English. Italian, too, is very straightforward to learn to read. Don't know so much about French.
As long as your DS is enjoying it, there is no reason not to continue with RWI if you can figure out how, or do any other phonics scheme (at this stage it wouldn't matter at all if you changed scheme, IMO). However as soon as it becomes a burden, or eats into his time preventing him from doing something else, I'd say 'leave off'. Focus on enjoying stories together, in English, and after he has learned to read in the new language, he will most likely pick up how to read in English with minimal effort.

Is it the RWI cards you bought?

We made a post box from a cereal box. Flap at the front, way to open at the back, covered in wrapping paper.

Then we used to play a game. I'd show her a card, if she knew the sound she got to post it in the box. If she didn't we put it back in the pack so she could have another go. At the end we opened the box and she counted how many she got.

I only used the cards she knew plus a few from the next stage so we gradually built up. We started with the sides with the pictures and then moved to the other sides.

When we got on to blending words I made up some cards with e.g. cat, pig, pin, dog and found objects to match. Then we put the objects around the room and she had to read a card and find the objects.

Invest in some phonics based early readers (eg book people).

There are nice packs of read write materials for home, so why not just stock up on those and crack on?

I emigrated when my dc were little and I bought all of the the books and the speed sound cards and did them with them at home. You can get packs of the books. They are clack and white. I went through them and underlined the ‘red’ words which you can’t sound out using phonics.

As long as you yourself are using the pure synthetic sounds you should be fine. You can learn them from Mr Thorne does phonics online if you want to hone your own sounds!