Part 2: How do I start my child learning to read with phonics?

As you prepare to move on to Pre-Reader, Book 2, check your child knows all the initial sounds and vowel sounds taught in Pre-Reader, Book 1.

Pre-Reader, Book 2 provides further practice for sorting, matching and sounding out three letter words. It provides simple reading activities in the form of flip books. If you are happy that your child is confident sounding out three letter words, you are ready to move on.

The next step is to learn the initial consonant blends. We often play a game with our children.

Clap and join the sounds together. Shout fl.

When you are sure your child is ready and can join two initial sounds together to make initial consonant blends, they can now practise sounding out words using them.

sn a p

fl a g

He or she is now ready to use his sentence maker to form sentences with four letter words. Copy and cut out the activity pages to make the games.

When your child has learnt to make sentences using initial consonant blends, he or she can now move on to sounding out final consonant blends, like m i lk, running the letters together to form a new word:

h o ld

We reinforce the skill of blending together four letter words with word sorting activities, sentence maker activities and reading, writing and tracing.

You need to spend plenty of time just playing fun games like matching pairs, bingo and snap.

Be cautious and only move on if your child is ready and has mastered the preceding activities.

“Always make learning to read fun and play plenty of games.”

Part three coming soon …