Fantastic Phonics...

Everyday we do a "Fantastic Phonics" Together time with all our children in their family groups.
Each session lasts from around 5 -10 mins focusing on listening and identifying sounds.

We use the Phase 1 Aspect of the Letters and Sounds government document that can be found here.

Phase 1 is all about the children tuning into the sounds around them, concentrating on developing children's speaking and listening skills and lays the foundations for their reading and writing skills to develop at school.

We play games, sing songs and investigate the world around us during our time together.

Seven aspects.
Each aspect contains three strands:
Tuning in to sounds (auditory discrimination). This is the strand we focus on with our Sausage dogs
Listening and remembering sounds (auditory memory and sequencing). This is the strand we focus on for the Spaniels
Talking about sounds (developing vocabulary and language comprehension). This is the strand we focus on for the Spaniels

Aspect 1 - Environmental Sounds
The aim of this aspect is to raise children's awareness of the sounds around them and to develop their listening skills. Activities suggested in the guidance include going on a listening walk, drumming on different items outside and comparing the sounds, playing a sounds lotto game and making shakers.

Aspect 2 - Instrumental sounds
This aspect aims to develop children's awareness of sounds made by various instruments and noise makers. Activities include comparing and matching sound makers, playing instruments alongside a story and making loud and quiet sounds.

Aspect 3 - Body percussion
The aim of this aspect is to develop children's awareness of sounds and rhythms. Activities include singing songs and action rhymes, listening to music and developing a sounds vocabulary.

Aspect 4 - Rhythm and rhyme
This aspect aims to develop children's appreciation and experiences of rhythm and rhyme in speech. Activities include rhyming stories, rhyming bingo, clapping out the syllables in words and odd one out.

Aspect 5 - Alliteration
The focus is on initial sounds of words, with activities including I-Spy type games and matching objects which begin with the same sound.

Aspect 6 - Voice sounds
The aim is to distinguish between different vocal sounds and to begin oral blending and segmenting. Activities include Metal Mike, where children feed pictures of objects into a toy robot's mouth and the teacher sounds out the name of the object in a robot voice - /c/-/u/-/p/ cup, with the children joining in.

Aspect 7 - Oral blending and segmenting
In this aspect, the main aim is to develop oral blending and segmenting skills. To practise oral blending, the teacher could say some sounds, such as /c/-/u/-/p/ and see whether the children can pick out a cup from a group of objects. For segmenting practise, the teacher could hold up an object such as a sock and ask the children which sounds they can hear in the word sock.

Look out for your weekly Newsfeeds and observations on Famly to find out more about what your child is doing with us.
There are also some other ideas of how to help here at Oxford Owl, here at Phonics Play and here at Early Impact learning.

​ENJOY!!!