Hello, and apologies for reopening an old thread - I'd be curious to know how parents / children are finding the big cat phonics books a year or two on?
I'm concerned about them, and have voiced that to teachers - they really turned off my foundation year child when he started them, having previously been so excited about reading. We ended up getting some Oxford songbirds phase one at home and after a couple of books he was enjoying reading and feedback from teachers was that his interest in reading had really picked up at school as well. We still read Oxford at home, as the Collins ones don't interest him - it's always a negotiation to get him to do the weekly home read of that weeks book, whereas he enjoys the Oxford stories.
It also worries me that the language used is often incorrect in order to shoehorn in the sounds they are focusing on - a simple bug bear would be things like 'Sit in it' - it being a mat, so it should be 'on' it, but the book doesn't use the letter 'o'. In the same book, an swimming arm band was labelled a 'pad' - my child knows this is not a pad but a band or arm band, so it's confusing. To me, this is bad use of English, and there are issues like this through the early books.
In the scheme of things, I know the reading is a small element of the programme - a couple of reads a week, plus a home read, whereas they get a lot of phonics and writing each day, and he really enjoys both of those activities and I feel in this area the Little Wandle scheme has taught him well.
Did people who disliked these books last year find they worked for their children in the end?
Thanks!
Dan