Phonics – The Happy Learner

Autumn and Halloween Learning Adventures

Sophie — Mon, 28 Oct 2019 21:18:50 +0000

It is that spooky time of year again and love it or hate it the children are certainly interested and want to get involved. We don’t do anything remotely scary as the children are very sensitive, but we do read our favourite books ‘Room on the Broom’ and ‘Pumpkin Soup’ and base activities around these. …

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Supporting children as they learn to write

Sophie — Fri, 18 Oct 2019 09:15:00 +0000

I have been chatting to a few mums lately whose children have recently started school. The same questions keep coming up “How do I support my child to hold a pencil properly?” “They get so frustrated because they can’t write the letters.” “They cross out their work or refuse to do it again because it …

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Phonics Through Play

Sophie — Wed, 03 Jul 2019 11:19:35 +0000

It has been a very busy few weeks leading up to the end of term so I haven’t had much time to blog. Luckily we have been playing lots of games at home so I have quite a lot to blog about. Something that has been brought to my attention a lot recently has been …

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Games for spellings and more phonics fun

Sophie Calienda — Mon, 04 Feb 2019 21:22:37 +0000

Since the last blog I have been working pretty much full time so it has been hard to fit in all the normal day to day bits as well blogging, but luckily things are now back to normal and back to part time work so I get more time to explore games and try them …

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Christmas phonics games

Sophie Calienda — Tue, 04 Dec 2018 21:38:59 +0000

With Christmas rapidly approaching I thought I would share some of my favourite Christmas phonics games with you. These games help to practise either individual phonics sounds or CVC words. They can also be adapted if you have children working on different phonics phases. These ideas have all been tried and tested on either my …

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Initial sound phonics games

Sophie Calienda — Sun, 18 Nov 2018 22:13:09 +0000

It has been a little while since I last blogged, mainly due to me preparing for a phonics information session with parents at school. So I thought it would be good to share some of the games and activities on here. Most children will now have learnt most of the phase 2 sounds which is …

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Phonics Games

Sophie Calienda — Sun, 14 Oct 2018 20:22:54 +0000

The shops have stocked their shelves with Christmas produce and I have been inspired to create some phonics games using the chocolate coins. So here are a few games that can be used with your children whether they are just starting out on their phonics journey or they have been learning for a year or …

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Top tips for learning ‘tricky’ words and keeping it fun!

Sophie Calienda — Tue, 27 Feb 2018 20:39:35 +0000

One area of phonics that the rules do not apply is ‘tricky’ words or ‘high frequency words’. We nickname them ‘tricky’ because they cannot be sounded out and just need to be learnt. Schools do this in a variety of different ways, a lot of the time your child will be given a set list …

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Phonics games using the ball pool

Sophie Calienda — Sun, 14 Jan 2018 21:19:53 +0000

All three of our children love playing with the ball pool, we play with it both inside and outside and all year round so I decided to make some phonics games using the ball pool or the balls from it. We have a ball pool that I bought from Morrisons in the sale last summer …

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Getting active with phonics!

Sophie Calienda — Tue, 09 Jan 2018 21:37:48 +0000

Learning phonics definitely does not have to be all about sitting down at a table with a pencil in hand, in fact I would say a large proportion of phonics learning can be done in an active way. In my experience more reluctant learners prefer active learning and will also be keen to join in …

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Getting started with Phonics

Sophie Calienda — Thu, 04 Jan 2018 21:17:18 +0000

I thought it would be a good idea to post a blog showing the variety of ways that you can expose your child to the world of phonics without actually sitting down and saying we are learning phonics. Learning letter sounds and eventually learning to read and write starts from very simple basics mainly being …

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Food Shopping

Sophie Calienda — Mon, 06 Nov 2017 21:23:35 +0000

I had to do the supermarket food shop with all the children on a Saturday morning. Whilst the children are generally good while shopping it still fills me with dread. It is one of those jobs that I want to get done as quickly as possible. I decided I would get the girls more involved …

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