My Simple Preschool - Phonics Part 2

Join me every week as I show you how me and my 4-year-old Certain Little Someone do simple preschool at home.

No curriculum, no pressure, but lots of learning!

Last week, I discussed in detail my approach to teaching phonics throughout the preschool years (and into kindergarten), but I realized I left out a few important details. So here are a few important details that I must mention.

Drill, Baby, Drill

I cannot say this often enough: just like math facts, the phonics sounds must be drilled incessantly until they are internalized. Incessantly. My Certain Little Someone drilled the alphabet every single day of school for the entire K3 year, and he’s still drilling it every day this year. He probably will for most of K4 and the beginning of K5 as well. If these sounds are not internalized, learning has not been fully accomplished.

I follow a particular pattern when reciting drills, and in the pre-school years, the drills are always accompanied by flash cards that contain both the letter and a key picture (i.e., a zebra for the letter “z”). For the alphabet sounds, we flip through the alphabet flash cards, and say this:

• A says “a”, “a”, alligator. (for very young children, you can just point and say, “a”, “a”, “alligator”)
• B says “b”, “b”, bear.
• Etc.

For the other phonics sounds, which are usually made up of a combination of letters, we follow this pattern:

• First we name the letters (for example - S, H)
• Then we say the sound they make (“sh”) twice
• Then we say the key word (“shoe”)
• For example: S - H- “sh” “sh” shoe

I like to get into a rhythm so that it’s kind of like a chant. If it gets boring, I change it up by reducing or increasing the volume (i.e., whispering or shouting), crouching down or reaching up high, using a different tone of voice, etc.

I generally drill each new set of sounds (digraphs, blends, etc.) daily for at least a few weeks. After that, I reduce the frequency, but keep them in the rotation. Each day, we drill several sets of sounds. (I keep each set of flash cards separate so they can be drilled individually.)

Worksheets

There are plenty of worthy experts who will tell you that phonics worksheets are pointless at best and detrimental at worst. I disagree. I am not an expert, but my common sense suggests that practical experience is necessary in the process of internalizing the phonics elements and rules the children are learning. Because phonics and reading involve written letters, I think worksheets are a valuable resource in helping them apply what they have learned. Worksheets might not be so useful in other subjects, but I think they are very important in phonics and spelling.

Of course, I’m not suggesting that worksheets take the place of instruction and more active educational activities. Not at all! But a well-chosen worksheet can enhance a phonics lesson and help cement different sounds and patterns in a child’s mind.

A good worksheet will help a child develop visual and aural discernment. It will require him or her to differentiate between different sound patterns as they are written and as they are heard. For example, it might ask the child to circle all the instances when the written sound “ph” occurs in a list of words. This helps the child isolate “ph” as a separate unique sound within a word full of other letters and sounds. It’s a very useful tool in training the eye. A similar exercise can be done with pictures containing certain sounds and asking children to identify particular sounds in one way or another. For example: circle all the pictures of words that start with the sound “b”.

Phonics workbooks and worksheets abound! It seems like even grocery stores carry basic phonics and math workbooks that you can use to supplement your child’s phonics instruction. Of course, not all of them are worth the money you spend on them; make sure the pages contain meaningful activities (and accurate phonetic sounds as well! It irritates me when workbooks and worksheets use the word “orange” to illustrate the sound “O” makes. In that word, the “o” goes with the “r” and cannot be isolated, so it’s a terrible choice to illustrate “o”. Similar issues exist with other letters.).

Also, you can find phonics worksheets all over the internet with just a simple Google search. The benefit of those is that they are free!

Unfortunately, you will find that once you get past the alphabet and some of the very basic sounds, the number of available worksheets reduces dramatically. So you may want to consider making your own simple worksheets. I’ve made lots of worksheets just using Microsoft Word and very basic graphics and images. Once you’ve seen a few phonics worksheets and workbooks, you’ll have a pretty good idea of the types of activities that work best, and you can just apply those ideas to each individual sound that you are focusing on.

Games

I touched on this briefly in my post last week, but I want to emphasize that phonics learning should be fun. Playing simple games will help! The games can be as simple or as fancy as you like - as you know, I like to keep things simple, so that’s what we do.

Here are a few basic game ideas that my students and My Certain Little Someone have enjoyed:

• Use a timer to complete a certain task, such as matching up upper-case and lower-case letters. Reward the student with a sticker or similar small prize if the task is completed on time.
• The basic idea of the game “Memory” can be applied in all sorts of ways - create sets of cards that are either the same (two cards with the same phonics sound) or go together (like the phonics sound - “ch” - on one card, and a picture that goes with that sound - chair - on another); place the cards upside down and proceed to play Memory!
• Ask the child to complete an action (clap his hands, jump, stand, or sit) when you say a word with a specific sound. Then say a whole bunch of words, some with the sound, some not. Be sure to go slowly enough that he or she has time to respond.
• Play “I Spy” with a sound - see if you can spy different items around the room (or in a book) that contain the sound in question.

Get Physical

Boys especially will benefit from any kind of physical activity that goes along with the phonics lesson. I should know, because I had a majority of boys in every single Kindergarten class I taught! And they were some active boys, let me tell you! We did a lot of moving around during every lesson, but especially in Phonics class.

Some fun movement ideas:

• When reciting phonics drills, make it a little more exciting by adding hand motions, like a cheerleader waving pom-poms. Jumping or marching in place also work. Keep the motions consistent across the board so that it doesn’t add any confusion.
• Write letters in the sky as you learn them.
• Form letter shapes with your body.
• Incorporate movement into phonics games (see above).

Sight Words

Sight words go more with reading I guess, but I always teach them during the phonics lesson. Some words in the English language (like “the”) cannot be decoded because they don’t follow the phonics “rules”, and/or they are used so often that learning them by rote is more beneficial than learning to decode them. I don’t particularly care for the most popular list of sight words because it includes a lot of words that either can be easily decoded or don’t need to be learned until they can be decoded. Here’s my own (far from comprehensive!) list in the approximate order I like to teach them:

• a, an, the
• in, it, is
• and
• I, my, mine
• do, to, so
• this, that, then
• there, their
• you, your
• does
• these, those
• say, says
• etc.

There are a lot more words that can and should be taught as sight words, but those are the essential ones for beginning readers.

Teaching sight words is mostly a matter of drilling the words by sight. You can also play games with them (see the above list for some ideas) and employ other creative methods of reviewing them, but it should be a relatively small part of the phonics lesson.

Resources

Teachers Pay Teachers Free Downloads - TPT is an awesome website that consists of content created entirely by actual teachers. This link directs you to the catalog of free downloadable worksheets, eBooks, and other activities, but they also have a lot of similar content available at a cost. You can see samples before you purchase to make sure it’s worth the money you will spend. I’ve gotten lots of great resources from this site.

Printable Preschool Pack Resources - Many amazing home-schooling (and school teachers, too) moms offer up their printable worksheets to the rest of us for free! This list is the best of the best (note that these are not all phonics, but they all include letter sounds to one degree or another).

Alpha-Bites - ideas for introducing each letter of the alphabet in a variety of creative ways

Phonetic Flip Chart - Create your own (super cheap!) flip chart that allows your child to practice blending different sounds and words. The example shown is for 3-letter (CVC) words, but the idea can be adapted to any kind of word!

Sight Word Ideas - Teach sight words in creative ways.

Follow my School Ideas Pinterest Board for even more resources!

Other posts in this series:

Phonics-Phonics, Part 2-Reading-Reading, Part 2-Handwriting-Math-Days of the Week-Bible-“Other”