Basic Phonics For Early Learners

All children learn language. In fact, children start making sounds from the moment they are born. Over time, those sounds become words, then sentences. All of a sudden your children are able to form arguments when they don't agree with you or speak for hours about their favourite Power Ranger or dinosaur. But speaking English will come to all children as they acquire language from a young age. Hearing their parents speak, watching tv programmes, listening to songs they can easily mimic all these things to help them acquire language. Phonics is different though by teaching your child phonics from a young age they're not only acquiring speaking skills, but setting a foundation for reading skills. Any parent can teach their child basic phonics. We all know it, we just don't know how to teach it. Always start of with SATPIN. These are the basic sounds your child should start with. The first and easiest one is definitely S: -
1) Teach them how to make the sound (sssssssssss)
2) Tell them words beginning with that sound (sock)
3) Show them the letter (S)
Do this with all the SATPIN sounds. Familiarise then with the sounds by using props. A good game that's useful for playing with little ones is putting general household objects in a sack and letting them pull them out one by one. What is the object? What's the initial sound? For example: sock (ssssssss), apple (a), etc. Once they have familiarised with the sounds, make words such as S-A-T, P-A-T, N-A-P. By saying a sound on each finger and holding your fingers up as you do, and then blending the sounds to make the word and rubbing your hands together when you do this.
As adults, when we were taught how to read when we were children it was in a completely different way. We learnt the letter names of the alphabet, not sounds, and then taught to read by sight. But this new method of teaching phonics is much more effective to teach reading. I have been teaching in a primary school for the last five years and have seen many students learn to read from it. Here s a tip: if you weren't taught phonics you won't know the letter sounds. A simple search on YouTube will yield many videos to teach you the letter sounds - Learn them! Before you teach your children!