Phonics Lessons

Spread the love

I know I have told you many times about what a difficult infant my daughter was. From the moment she was born, she gave me a run for my money. She cried all the time, all the time. I remember my first day with her in the hospital, when she first started and did not seem to stop. In a panic I started singing the first song that came to mind, the ABC song. It miraculously quieted her cries as she stared up at me taking in my song as I named off each letter. She listened so intently, her eyes fixed on my mouth as I sang. This became my go to song to soothe my daughter.

Now here it is 2 1/2 years later & it is still a favorite. Mai sings her ABC’s all the time. Many mornings we are awaken by the sounds of her sweet voice reciting her alphabet. We have been working on sounding out our letters for quite some time now. We do many activities and lessons to practice. At random, I will start pointing out objects and sounding them out for her. “Look Mai, hat. “H” hhhhhhhh. “A” aaaaaaaaaaaa. “T” ttttttttt, hat” We read, work on her ABC puzzles & she watches me write the letters out on her chalkboard.

IMG_2350

One of my daughter’s favorite phonics games to play is a simple one. We like to have living room picnics, so we usually lay down a blanket and sit on the floor. We use her ABC magnets & put them in a pile on the floor. We grab them one by one and Mai will tell me the letter and a word that the letter begins with. As you can see from her video, she is very enthusiastic about this game. She is very proud when she gets them all and so is mommy. Sometimes it is the simplest of things that have the greatest effect. What is wonderful is we play this often and she comes out with new words each time. Sometimes she even says some that mommy doesn’t know. The other day, she told me “Q” was for quoll. I had to ask her a couple of times to repeat it. “Are you saying quoll?” “Yes, the quoll is sooooooo cute.” I had to Google it. A quoll is a little animal that kind of looks like a mouse. She was right they are pretty cute. I discovered later that one of her ABC Mouse activities featured a quoll. My little smarty is already smarter than mommy.

Author

10 comments

  1. So very cute and I have to tell you that my almost 5 year old was just tested at pre-school for her phonetic sounds and was told she didn’t always know the sound of some letters. I was puzzled, because like Mai, she can tell me words and wish letter they start with. When I told her teacher this, she told me that they just tested for the letter and sound and words weren’t a part of this or phonetics. I seriously had an issue with this and just was so happy to read your post, because knowing the actual word that starts with a letter is definitely phonetics to me, too and both my husband and I told the teacher this and needless to say, Lily is now going to a different pre-school, because I had this issue and a few more that I didn’t want to have this same teacher next year. I will hopefully be sharing more on my blog soon, but huge thank you for sharing this today 🙂

    1. That is so strange, Janine. How can sounding out your letters and being able to associate them with the correct words not be a part of phonetics? Ugh! Could she explain to you why? That is frustrating for sure.

      1. Common core (federal government school curriculum) dictates they just know the letters and sounds. Seriously, insane and I am so not a fan of this way of learning at all.

  2. So cute! She really knows her letters and a lot of words! I try to keep learning fun for my kids too. Recently they enjoyed playing Boggle Jr. where they have to match letters to the word / picture on the card. Hooray for educational games that kids like!

      1. My parents had Boggle Jr. at their house from when I was a kid, and I thought my 4.5 yr old and almost 3 yr old wouldn’t like it, but they do.

  3. How cute, both my kids where fractious baby’s and I used to read to them all the time generally what ever I was reading at the time lol used to get funny looks reading them The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant by Stephen Donaldson or Frank Herbert’s Dune, I like to think that’s why they they won’t shut up now

    1. My daughter is a chatterbox as well. We read to her a lot and my husband also takes to reading her strange book choices for her age, but she has hundreds of books and we have been through them all.

Leave a Reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.