Learning the alphabet

Posted on January 18, 2014 by ofamily

We have been following the Jolly Phonics program where they introduce the kids to the sounds of the letter and only much later teach them the names and the order of the letters in the alphabet.

Pink is a fan of the Cbeebies program Squiggler letters.  In this program there is a alphabet song which she loves and she learnt it just be watching the program (Big bonus when TV time actually ends up teaching them something).

So she already knew the names and the order when it came time for her to learn them as part of the Jolly Phonics program.  However me being me we did a number of activities to ensure that she understood the names of the letters and the order.

Firstly we used our letter magnets on the magnetic board and put them all in the correct order (warning this can be a bit testing if you have a younger sibling trying to join in).

We also got out letter stickers out and used them to make our own alphabet

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Pink loves any activity that involves stickers so this was a big winner.  We also sometimes use the stickers to practice our spelling.

And naturally we needed to include a home drawn worksheet.  I wrote some of the letters in some of the butterflies but left gaps so that she had to fill in the missing letters.

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She really loved the hand drawn worksheet and has already requested that I do another for this week but instead of butterflies wants cupcakes.

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Phonics – sh / th/ ch

Posted on January 15, 2014 by ofamily

I am a big believer is revising what we have done over and over again to make sure there is true understanding.  For me the key is just to make sure that you find fun ways of doing it so that the concepts stick in the kids brain.

When we first learnt the sh/ th/ ch sounds we had great fun making our sound flowers with the words in the petals

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Pink really loved this activity so much so that we now have it hanging on the wall.

I also found these fun penguin and fish words.  I changed the activity slightly, we put a penguin with a sound on a cover of an envelope and then Pink had to read the words on the fish and feed them to correct penguin (ie put the correct word in the correct envelope).

http://thefirstgradeparade.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/penguins

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We also found this lovely cutting and sticking worksheet for the sh/th/wh sounds.  It is from the 3 Dinosaur website part of their tooth fairy pack (pink had just lost her first baby tooth so this was a big hit).  We have done a number of these sound pages where you have to stick the word in the correct sound column and they have all be very popular with Pink.

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The Gruffalo madness continued

Posted on January 13, 2014 by ofamily

This weekend we took the kids to Kew Gardens.  Within minutes of arriving we noticed Blue peering under leaves and then he shouted “I see it quick the Gruffalo it’s getting away”.  And so for the entire trip to Kew Gardens we searched under every bush around all the trees for The Gruffalo.

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We even took the search up to the Treetop walkway to see if we could spot The Gruffalo from up top.  And the lift was broken but both kids marched up all the stairs quite quickly just in case they could see the Gruffalo below them.

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On our walk home a very happy Pink whispered in my ears (did not want Blue to hear) “I know the Gruffalo is just pretend but it sure was fun hunting for him in Kew today”.  2 Happy kids means 2 Happy parents.

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Maths – Odds and Evens

Posted on January 13, 2014 by ofamily

I have realised with Pink that when she learns a concept by “doing” an activity as opposed to a worksheet she tends to understand it.

I started introducing the idea of Odd and Even numbers a few months ago just be casually getting her to look at the numbers on the houses on our side of the street (all even) and then on a different day the numbers on the other side (all odd).  This simple excercise also really helped with her counting in 2’s and now she will often do it by herself when we walk home.

The first set activity that we did when we started learning about Odds and Evens is in the picture below.  We wrote the numbers on the lolly sticks making sure that we wrote all even numbers in a different colour to the Odd numbers.  Pink then used her playdough to make them into a number line.

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We also found this great printout (free) from the Free Homeschool Deals website, part of the apple pack.  It was a good introduction to Odd and Even numbers as the apples are colour coded

Free Fall Apple Activities Printable Set {Free Instant Download}

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I then made her a simple butterfly worksheet.  I wrote the words Odds on one side and Even on the other and she went through her numbers from 1 to 20 deceiding on which wing they belonged.  While she was doing this I could see that it was really starting to sink in.

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Reading with sissors and glue

Posted on January 10, 2014 by ofamily

One of Pink’s favourite reading activities is when I give her worksheets where she has to cut out the words and paste them in order to make a sentence.  She does not even realise that she is practicing her reading.  We got a number of these great worksheets from The Phonics handbook by Sue Lloyd and The Grammar Handbook.  While I am sitting here writing, she asked if her “school work” today could include some more of the worksheets we did yesterday (you know you are onto a good thing when they actually ask to do the work).

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We love the Jolly phonics program but what I found early on was the Activity books where not enough if you are using them for Homeschooling.  The Activity books are great for introducing the sounds and the workbooks are great for practicing writing but for extra pages the Handbooks really are the answer.

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