Letter Y Jolly Phonics Story

[Gerald Weiß]

Idid a quick introduction to the sound /t/ this time and both boys were eager to practice their letter formation. They love the grooved letters in their finger phonics book that it is sometimes quite difficult to draw their attention to the pictures in the book. I explained how t is written, from the top down and straight across. Xxm could do it independently but Xmm needs me to guide him along.

Yeah, having learned three letter sounds, we made our first attempt at blending. We revised our /s/ and /a/. I demonstrated how to blend at and sat. You can watch this YouTube video on how to introduce blending.

I found a new iPad app called LetterSchool which makes for a fun and engaging way to practice writing your letters (both uppercase and lowercase) and numbers. There is a lite version which is free to try but I guarantee you, you will definitely get the full version after seeing it.

Xxm practiced writing t on LetterSchool. He actually went on to write other letters and enjoyed himself thoroughly doing so.

Xxm loves the letter t since he started learning his alphabets. In fact, it was his first letter which he had picked up from starfall months ago. His fascination with t and progressively the rest of the alphabets is primarily because t is for train. Hence, he worked on his usborne sticker book happily upon seeing the train in the book. Xxm learned that t is for truck, teddy bear, tree, toothbrush, table, tractor, train, tiger and tomato.

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/.

They also wrote the letter sound f on the same scrapbook using the rainbow technique. They also worked on their literacy workbook where they distinguished between letter f and other letters we have done so far. The children then followed the Jolly phonics story for letter f.

The action done when saying the f sound is associated with the picture story like all the other letter actions are. The children slowly bring their hands together like the fish deflating, making a continuous /f,f,f,f,f/sound.

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!

Laying a strong foundation of letter sounds is crucial. For this we used phonics activity books from dreamland, which has several activities of matching beginning, ending and middle sounds to objects. After this comes blending, which can be a daunting task and requires patience. I made a car racing game with basic CVC (Consonant Vowel Consonant) words on a thick paper and a road under it. With a toy car on the road we would sound each letter individually first, then faster, and faster till they blend into the word.

i. My Very First Reading Library from Usborne: It comes with 50 books, each with levelled reading difficulty. The stories are different from the regular fairy tales and very engaging. The first book in the series, pirate pat, will get the child interested right from the start. The book has larger text on the left that the parents can read, and smaller three letter sentences on the right that the kids can read. I love the exercises they have at the end of the book. If you want to buy just one set, go for this.

ii. Jollykids Storytime: At the beginning stage of reading some kids (like mine) want a really colourful, bright, glossy picture book for it to be attractive. If your kid is like mine, go for this series to start with. Once they start with this, they will take to everything else.

iii. Scholastic Little Learners Pack (Sight words): This helps in introducing and learning the sight words, which can otherwise be a daunting task. It has fun colouring and other activities that help the children memorise sight words.

iv. Fitzroy Readers: This series is good for independent reading practice in a graded way (starts with only cvc). The stories have colourful pictures, and introduce sight words in a graded way. But, the best, as per me, is the workbook. It has tonnes of fun activities, especially the word find.

4. BOB Books come highly highly highly recommended! These books come in different boxsets for different levels and are published by Scholastic. These boxes can be ordered from Scholastic via our kbc storefront as well.

Phonics is important in learning to read and write because letter-sound knowledge is the foundation needed to build up reading and writing abilities. Written language is like a code that kids must crack and phonics is the key to cracking it. Read More

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.

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