About

Children learn so much through play and actually doing things. If they are bored they fidget so the idea is to keep them interested and motivated and if they are more motivated they will learn things easier. I believe in teaching children to read and write in a fun way using games and practical activities. Add a bit of competition to any activity and you have a game. Felix is my cat and I had a lovely little cat toy crocheted for me to use on this site. He is in most of the photos. I chose Felix because of the beginning sound.

You do not need to spend a fortune to teach phonics. You need a simple kit which consists of a few items which you could certainly find around school. If you are a parent teaching at home you may need to buy a few things such as a whiteboard, dry wipe pen and magnetic letters. Children love whiteboards and dry wipe pens. It does not matter if they make a mistake they can just rub it out and start again. The confidence this gives is amazing. All resources that need to be printed can be found on my blog so please visit and download the things you need. These are all free.

I worked for many years teaching phonics to children and many of those children were children with special educational needs who found learning in the classroom very difficult. Through constant daily practice children make good progress. I taught children games and activities which they grew to love and I simply changed the graphemes or focus sounds. Children love to be familiar with something. Teach them a bingo game and they will love it! You can make absolutely anything into a game and when they think they are playing a game they are so eager to join in. You have their attention completely. You can so easily make so many games with a whiteboard and dry wipe pen. One of the favourites with my children was bingo.

In my experience of phonics and children learning to read, children need to be taught phoneme/grapheme correspondences so that they are totally automatic. A child must KNOW them, without any hesitation. This is where many children fail to read and that is because they are pushed on too quickly without these foundations being built solidly. Once they have learned their phoneme/grapheme correspondences (and I am only talking about a few at a time) then it’s time to start blending with those sounds that they have learned. Again if they know those sounds then blending will happen almost naturally. Some children need a bit of guidance but most will get it very quickly. Blending starts quite slow until the child is blending very quickly and silently and then automatically