| When learning about phonics sounds, it's important | | | | magnets on the floor. Hold up a flash card, and |
| to remember the sheer number of ways | | | | see how fast your child can find the letter and |
| different letters can produce different sounds. | | | | run to put it on the fridge.b. Alphabet Mats: |
| To start off with, the English language is | | | | Alphabet foam mats that you can play with are |
| composed of 44 key sounds, called phonemes. | | | | very tactile and a hit with kids.c. Newspaper |
| These phonemes, or sounds, can be spelled in 120 | | | | search: Hold up a flashcard and see how many |
| different ways. Learn the sounds that these 120 | | | | times you can find that letter in the newspaper. |
| different combinations of letters make and your | | | | 2. Letter writing skills: Learning to write the English |
| child will have an excellent foundation for reading. | | | | language is very important. I don't think it's |
| That sounds challenging, but it's significantly less | | | | necessarily needed for reading, but a lot of people |
| challenging than memorizing the thousands of | | | | think that learning to write the letters helps |
| words that comprise a working vocabulary. | | | | facilitate the reading process. |
| Here's a good example of this concept. The sound | | | | 3. Accurately articulate the phonemes on the |
| /s/ can be represented in many different ways. | | | | grapheme chart: So a child would know that /s/ |
| Sun, dress, city, cell, and horse all have the same | | | | makes a "sss" sound, /b/ makes a "buh" sound. |
| s/ sound, but spelled in different ways. | | | | 4. Learn all the graphemes and the sounds they |
| So what can you do? Learn to memorize the | | | | make: The phoneme-grapheme chart will help |
| different graphemes. There are a few main | | | | facilitate this, because by looking at the phoneme |
| stages to this process. | | | | in the start of the column, and the graphemes |
| 1. Letter recognition: It is critical that your child can | | | | listed next to it, they will know that the |
| accurately name and find different letters before | | | | graphemes make the same sound as the initial |
| starting the process of phonics. That is, they can | | | | phoneme. There are a lot of sites with good |
| name all the letters of the alphabet and have a | | | | phoneme-grapheme charts out there. |
| good visual memory for them. I have a few good | | | | 5. Practice blending the letters together/reading |
| games for this, and you can turn it into a really | | | | skills with decodable readers |
| fun process:a. Letter match: Buy some alphabet | | | | This is just a quick explanation of the process of |
| magnets and flashcards. Pour the alphabet | | | | learning phonic sounds. |