Make Your Own Phonics Game
- Learning Resources Posted On Apr 28, 2020 | Learn
If you have a child in early primary school, you’ll be familiar with phonics. These are the building blocks used to teach children to read and write. Teaching phonics at home can be an enjoyable journey of discovery for you and your young reader. Teachers Dennis and Margi Brown (creators of tacklingtables and regular contributors to our blog) have created a quick, fun idea for you to make your own phonics game at home.
But first, what are phonics? The National Literacy Trust explains that written language is like a code. Phonics helps children decode words by understanding the relationship between sounds in spoken English and written letters. It’s a systematic, sequential way to teach reading fluency and you can learn more about that here.
How can I help my child practise phonics at home?
If you’re the parent of a beginner reader, team up with your child’s teacher to reinforce the classroom learning process. There are many simple, fun things you can do to boost reading fluence and your child’s teacher will have lots of ideas.
Make your own phonics game
Here’s a fun game for two or more players you make in minutes using items you have at home. It’s also a fun upcycling project.
You’ll need:
- An old clean eggbox for 12 eggs
- Card
- Scissors
- A felt-tipped pen
- Glue
- A counter or 1p coin
Do this activity:
To make, cut out 12 card circles that can fit into the depressions in the egg box. Write the phonemes right for your child’s learning stage – one per card. Press or glue them into the egg box. Place the counter or 1p coin into the box and you’re ready to play!
Take it in turns to shake the box, and then open the lid. Wherever the counter or coin has landed, the player must think of a word using that phoneme. The correct answer scores a point. This can be played as teams for one child against another.
Why not create several phonic egg boxes with:
- Initial sounds
- End sounds
- Medial sounds
Start shaking and have fun whilst practising your phonemes!
Find more fun ways to build reading and writing confidence in your child. Try these activities and tips to develop speech and language skills.
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How to use Hot Dots® to support learning phonics at home!
We're on a mission to help support learning phonics at home, keep children's brains engaged, and develop skills in important learning areas. We've teamed up with Kerri Hibberd, a teacher and phonics coordinator with over 10 years experience, to find out more about phonics and how to support this area of learning at home.
Download your free Hot Dots printable worksheets on our home learning page.
What is Phonics?Words are made up of small units of sound called phonemes. Phonics teaches children to listen carefully and identify the phonemes that make up each word. This helps children learn to read and spell words. As the English language is so tricky and complex it could be referred to as a code. Phonics teaches children how to break this code by learning the easier bits first, before progressing onto the more complex phonemes and sounds.
There has been a huge shift in the past few years in how we teach reading in UK schools. This is having a significant impact and helping many children learn to read and spell. Phonics is recommended as the first strategy that children should be taught in helping them learn to read. It runs alongside other teaching methods such as guided reading and shared reading that help children develop all the other vital reading skills, while hopefully giving them a real love of reading.
What is blending?We teach children to read by teaching them how to blend. This is when children say the sounds that make up a word and are able to merge these sounds together until they can hear what the word is. This skill is vital in learning to read and is the skill that is tested during the phonics screening test at the end of Year 1 at school.
How can I help my child with learning phonics at home?
The best way to practise phonics with your children at home is to make learning fun and ensure they know and can pronounce all their phonemes and sounds correctly. Learning Resources have some fantastic products to support learning through play that I myself am using with my own daughter. Hot Dots Let's Learn! Jolly Phonics Set is a self-checking activity that your child can use independently.
Image: Learning Resources Hot Dots Let's Learn! Jolly Phonics Set
What is Hot Dots?Hot Dots is a unique self-checking system designed to build children’s confidence and support classroom learning. Sets cover maths and phonics. Just press the Hot Dots pen to the answer dot on the activity card for an immediate response including colourful lights, fun phrases and even silly sounds! The pen flashes green lights with encouraging sounds and phrases for correct answers and red lights with gentle redirection for incorrect answers.
Images: Learning Resources Original Talking Hot Dots Pen and Hot Dots Jr Ace the Talking, Teaching Dog Pen
Hot Dots Jolly PhonicsThis phonics specific product has been developed in collaboration with Jolly Learning, the founding company of Jolly Phonics teaching framework. It has a fun and child-centred approach to teaching literacy through synthetic phonics. The set features engaging cards with colourful illustrations of familiar characters.
Hot Dots® Jr.Introduce key early learning skills with these colourful activity sets. Each set includes double-sided cards with self-checking activities that help to develop age-appropriate skills from problem solving to the alphabet and phonics.
Image: Learning Resources Hot Dots Jr. Beginning Phonics Card Set
Shop our Hot Dots range here.
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