Jolly Phonics C Story
Amalia Antill
The children found out that there are many animals which start with the letter p sound. Words like pig, panda, polar bear, and parrot, penguin, puppy. We then moved on to other objects starting with this sound such as paws, pink, purple, popcorn, present, paint. Some of these words are found in the jolly phonics picture story below.
A boy is having a birthday party. He opens his presents and plays some party games. Then he puffs out the candles on his cake. They are trick candles and keep relighting. Everyone tries to puff out the candles, going /p,p,p,p/.
So far we have finished working on the first set of the jolly phonics letters. The letters were s,a,t,i,p,n. In class we went through all the rhyme songs and actions of these letters, as well as their formation.
The children experimented with trying to write the letters sounds on their mini whiteboard after doing the formation on the big whiteboard with their finger. We also created a story where Harriette the witch made a delicious soup with various ingredients all starting with the s,a,t,i,p,n letters and pretended to put them in our class cauldron.
The children found out that there are many words which start with the letter h sound. Some of which are linked to Halloween too. Words like hat, haunted, house, We then moved on to other objects starting with h, such as hill, hand, hair, hedgehog, hot, horse, heart. Some of these words are found in the jolly phonics picture story below. We also mentioned the two Haileys we have in class.
When working with this letter besides using the interactive whiteboard the children also worked on their letter scrapbook where they created their own magic hat by gluing some fairy dust (glitter) on top and then stuck 5 stars stickers.
Jolly Phonics, which is from jollyliteracy.com and just2ducks LLC, is a SUPER EASY phonics and grammar program for children. We received the set of all three Jolly Phonics Student Books, the teacher guide, and the Grammar 1 workbook, teacher book, and Jolly Songs.
The first phonics book consists of one page a day for students. There is also more info on how to teach the lesson in the teacher book. I use this as a guide. The teacher book mentions letters we are to review and the story to be read.
The second and third book contain a slightly different format than book one. Book two features writing words, identifying correct spelling and reading short phrases. Book 3 contains more reading and writing sentences. However, although the formats are different from book one, each book contains beautifully drawn colorful pictures and fun activities for the students. These books are meant to be worked through during either preschool or kindergarten.
This looks like a very good program for covering beginning grammar. I really wish I had known about this program when my older kids were younger. There is some great content in this book and it is laid out so nicely!
It is that time of the year again when I start to think about what new resources I want to buy and I start searching for as many reviews as I find so I can make the best possible decision. One of the resources that I am looking at again is Jolly Phonics. We used it with our daughter and now are probably going to use it again with our son. So I thought it was high time that I wrote a blog post about the Jolly Phonics resources that we have used. This is my personal opinion based on using resources which we bought ourselves.
When we first started using Jolly Phonics I bought the Jolly Stories book, the Activity books and the DVD. My kids love the DVD. Honest they love Inky, Snake and Bee. As an adult watching the DVD I thought it was a very basic DVD but both my kids did not notice that and they have watched and watched it over and over again. One big Plus with the DVD is there are NO American accents (my daughter picks up accents very quickly so for us this was a big bonus). The DVD is divided sections that correspond to the activity books so as the kids can watch an episode on the DVD they can then do the matching pages in the Activity books.
My kids also really love the Jolly Stories (Jolly Phonics). Our Jolly stories book is actually one of our most used story books. They really enjoy the adventures that Inky, Bee and Snake get up to and they both love the fact that the large letters on each page are textured. Both my kids are constantly tracing over the letters with their fingers. I have no doubt that we are going to be re-reading the stories with my son as we start doing his phonics. I am actually hoping that I might be able to get my daughter to read the stories to my son as I think it will be great reading practice for her.
The Activity books were also a big hit with my daughter. They are colourful and contain lots of stickers. I think they are great for kids who want to learn to read but might be finding the writing side a bit more difficult. The activity books do not contain a lot of handwriting. For my daughter this was a big bonus as she initially battled with her handwriting but the fact that there are lots of stickers and other activities in these books allowed her to continue learning without getting frustrated with her writing. I also need to mention that the pages in the activity books are not overcrowded. My daughter does not like workbooks where there is too much happening on one page. The activity books kept her interest but they did not overwhelm her.
The Jolly Phonics Workbooks: Books 1-7. These books are meant to go with the activity books. The workbooks are black and white and contain writing practice. I was initially a bit confused about the Jolly Phonic activity books verses the Jolly Phonics workbooks so we actually only started with these later on. They are different. The activity books are stickers and activities which teach the different sounds, the workbooks are pages of writing practice and later on other writing activities. I personally think the two sets work well together. My daughter did find using the Jolly workbooks helped her writing but we did have to supplement with other extra writing pages aswell.
The The Phonics Handbook: A Handbook for Teaching Reading, Writing and Spelling (Jolly Phonics). I wish I had bought this when my daughter started learning her phonics. The handbook is great if you are unsure about how to teach phonics, it gives lots of good ideas and it contains a number of extra pages which you can photocopy, these are great for extra practice. The handbook is written for teachers so gives lots of ideas on how to teach in the classroom but for me being a nervous first time homeschooler I actually found reading it gave me some much-needed confidence.
The The Grammar 1 Handbook: A Handbook for Teaching Grammar and Spelling: Bk. 1 (Jolly Grammar). I bought these as I felt like I needed a guide on what I needed to teach to my daughter next. It definitely does do that. It includes pages of revision of the jolly phonics program and it includes lots of pages on how to teach grammar. Again the handbooks are written for teachers and they contain lots of black and white pages which you can photocopy and use with the kids. Great if you are going to be teaching more than one child.
I also bought my daughter the Jolly Grammar Pupil book. This is a lovely colour workbook for the kids to do. Again the pages are of a high quality. They are colourful without being too overwhelming. Each page is clear. I must point out that the Jolly Grammar handbook and the Jolly Grammar pupil book were designed together so they contain almost identical pages. In the photo below the book on the left is the Handbook version and the book on the right is the Pupil Book version, as you can see almost identical. Depending on how your kids like to work you could buy the handbook and use the photocopy pages out of that without having to buy the pupil book.
We have also recently been give two copies of the Finger Phonics books by a friend. My son has enjoyed paging through them and running his fingers over the letters but they are already a bit too basic for him, they would be great for little ones just starting to learn some letters.
My son is now desperate to start reading so I have been looking at what route I want to go with him. He has a copy of the Usborne Big Phonics workbook which in my opinion is okay if you are using it to reinforce what the kids are learning at school but as my son is going to be homeschooling I do not think it is a proper phonics grounding. I feel that although I do supplement the Jolly phonics program with extra phonic activities and extra writing pages it does provide a good solid phonic grounding. So I am going to be including a new set of Jolly Phonics activity books on my new resources list and probably also a new set of the Jolly Phonic workbooks.
We don't use Jolly Phonics, so some of their actions (attached) wouldn't make sense to our children, e.g. 'i' for mouse (Inky Mouse). Has anyone come up with any other actions? By the way, do you consider actions very helpful in the learning of letter sounds?
We use Phonics Bug which does not have actions. We do teach the jolly phonic actions and tell the jolly phonic story when we teach a new sound. I have found the actions do help children remember the sounds, especially the middle and lower ability children. It is another helpful method to help learn the sounds.
I understand the importance of visual-auditory-kinesthetic learning, but to reinforce the sounds and help children remember them, don't they have to be well-connected to the sounds and make sense to the children?
That's exactly what we do finleysmaid - I did a dissertation piece on using signed spoken English and an action research project on the same subject - the children really enjoy the signing element and I find it enhances our phonics input sessions and the children's acquisition and retention of phonics.
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