As part of our Nursery-P1 transition programme, we begin to build children’s awareness of some initial sounds. A ‘sound’ is how we describe learning letters of the alphabet, with a focus on how the sound is made, as opposed to the capital letter name. Over the coming weeks, we will have a fortnightly ‘sound’ focus to expose children to the building blocks of reading and literacy development.
This video, until around 1m 30s, explains ‘phonics’ and gives an insight into how children can be taught to read;
Children show awareness of and interest in sounds and letters from various ages, some children keen to find letters in their name, some begin to form letters when drawing. All children make sounds when they speak, some finding it easier than others. When we speak about ‘sounds’ we are talking about the sound the letter makes; the letter ‘M’ makes the ‘mmmmmmm’ sound, but is called ‘EM’. Some children can name capital letter names, but are unaware of the ‘sound’ a letter makes; we focus on sounds to aid children in the beginning stages of reading.
The below video illustrates the importance of not adding an ‘uh’ to the end of the sounds; although we don’t use this resource to teach phonics, it is interesting to hear how the pure sounds are made…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EYx1CyDMZSc
The purpose of our focus on initial sounds in nursery is not to ‘teach’ children about them ,but to offer them exposure to this exciting learning context and allow them to begin to hear and understand the language of literacy learning. Over the coming weeks we will look at the following sounds;
18/04/18 M
02/05/18 C
16/05/18 P
30/05/18 S
The reason we choose these sounds to begin with is that each sound is made with a different part of the mouth. When you make the ‘sound’ you will feel that you use different parts of your mouth, we will begin to show the children that these sounds are made in different ways. Making the sound and hearing the sound in nursery will help to focus children on the formal learning of initial sounds when they enter P1 in August, where these sounds will be recapped in various active learning environments.
How can you support your child at home?
Answer questions they have.. ask a member of the nursery team if you are unsure about anything, we are happy to support in any way we can.
Play games with them.. I Spy is a great one for initial sounds, or even asking the question ‘Can you find something that starts with mmmmmmm?’
Draw, read, talk – expose your child to sounds in the environment, do they know what letters are in their name? Do they know a ‘s’ looks like a snake? Can they make the sounds with the right part of their mouth?
Children all learn at different paces and in different ways, look at where your child is in their acknowledgement and engagement with initial sounds and join them there 🙂
