We are doing more formal phonics sessions in nursery and the following page of ideas will help you to recreate the work we are doing. You can also look at the ideas for developing listening further down the page.
There is also some information about phonics your child will experience as they move through the school.
At this time in the nursery, we are focusing on Phase 1 of Letters and Sounds. This covers 7 aspects of listening - a skill we as adults take for granted! Encourage your child to develop their listening skills by pointing out sounds when you hear them, model words you use to describe them and asking them what they might hear in different places.
In nursery, we follow ‘Letters and Sounds’, which is split inot 6 phases – we focus mainly on phase 1, with a few children starting phase 2 at the end of their time with us.
Here you will find a guide to some of the games and terms your child will encounter as they move through the school and develop their phonic skills. This is for you to familiarise yourselves with what to expect when your child moves to reception – please do contact me if there is anything you want clarifying. There is also a couple of sound mats, that we will use from time to time in our activities.
Don’t forget, a wonderful way of practising rhyming words, an aspect of phonics we focus on in nursery, can be practised by listening to stories with rhyming words in them. Some of our ‘book at bedtime’ stories are in this category – Balloon.
Also, stories such as 'Hello, goodbye' which is also a 'book at bedtime' help to develop phonic skills - in this case by practising different voices and volumes.