5 Ways To Give Your Kids A Head Start With Phonics
If you want to give your kids a head start in phonics, there are a few things that you can do at home. You don't need any special tools or equipment - just some creative and colourful books and activities that will help teach your children the basics of phonics. In this blog post, we will share 5 ways to teach phonics at home using fun activities and books. We hope that this information will be helpful for parents who want to help their children excel in school!
Read Phonics Books Together
One of the best ways to teach phonics is to read phonics books together. This will help your child learn the basic sounds of each letter and how they are used to form words. By investing the time into reading books together, you can proactively encourage your little one to sound out words and blend sounds. Reading these books together will also help to build your child's confidence in reading alone.
Phonics Flashcards
Another great way to teach phonics is to use phonics flashcards. In fact, we have included phonic flashcards in our phonics book, which can now be purchased on Amazon. Flashcards are a great way to make learning to read more interactive and fun, whilst also helping your child to recall sounds and connect sounds to letters. You can also use them to play games with your children, such as matching the sound with the correct letter or word.
Whiteboard Words
Writing words together is another effective technique to help your child learn phonics at home. This can be easily achieved by using a simple whiteboard or even just a piece of paper. Write out some simple words for your child and have them trace over the letters with a crayon. As they get better at this game, you can start to write more difficult words. You can also play games where you write out a word and your child has to say what sound each letter makes. Another way to do this is to plan a trip to the beach and use a stick and the sand to practice phonics together.
Building Blocks
If you’re homeschooling your kids, one technique to teach phonics at an early age is to use building blocks. This is a great activity for younger children who are just learning the basic sounds of each letter and will help them to visualise how sounds blend together to form words. You can start by building simple words with three letters and then move on to more difficult words as your child gets better at phonics. You can also use the blocks to build words that rhyme or words that start with the same sound.
Spot the Difference Phonics Game
Last, but not least, we come to spot the difference. All you need is a sheet of paper and a pen. On the sheet of paper, draw two columns of words. In the first column, write out some simple words that your child likely already knows how to read. In the second column, change one letter in each word to make a new word. For example, you could change the word ‘cat’ to ‘bat’. Your child then has to read both columns of words and spot the difference. This is a great way to help your child learn how such a small change in letter can create new words.
Phonics Book for 4-5 Year Olds (Reception) by Jungle Publishing
To empower parents when it comes to homeschooling and teaching phonics, we've put together a 72-page book packed with colourful images, and creative games designed to help your children learn the art of blending sounds, segmenting, and sounding out tricky words.