Tips to teach phonics to your child

Tips to teach phonics to your child

Teaching phonics is an important part of early learning. Some children readily pick up sounds from their surroundings. While others need a little effort to relate to the sounds. This means that some children are more easily stimulated by sounds. They are also auditory learners, by nature. Whereas, others can be stimulated to learn sounds in various other ways.

In order to use the best tips to teach phonics to your child, we can understand these two phases:

Priming phase (passive)
Active learning (naming and identifying alphabet)

Priming children in advance of teaching phonics has great benefits. It can depend on these factors:

• promoting listening skills
• relating sounds with objects
• connecting sounds with actions
• relating sounds with alphabet

Promoting Listening Skills

The child’s environment can be more stimulating. This promotes better listening skills.

Mindful Music, chants/hymns, rhymes/songs, nature sounds, and soft conversations are great inputs. Children can easily mimic different sounds. Another game is to identify the sound sources is a great game.

Read more about Teaching reading comprehension to kids click here

Relating Sounds with Objects

This is easy with children who are happy to explore. For example, copying animal sounds with movements, naming fruits, vegetables, flowers, etc. Sorting objects in the house according to beginning sounds, like, “bb- brush! bb- bottle!”. Identifying feelings and colors can also be helpful.

Relating Sounds with Actions

Examples are facial expressions, copying cartoon characters or animals, and rhymes with actions. These activities help a lot with listening skills. Learning to pronounce the words properly while speaking, is also a natural way to learn sounds better.

Relating Sounds with Alphabet

Relating sounds with letters need creativity and patience. Using all the senses to learn this can be helpful. For example:

• making dough letters
• writing on sand or tracing with hand.
• Interactive digital games which use sound inputs

Sometimes children need visual or action-based cues to understand the origin of the sound. For example, pointing the nose for /n/ or the throat for /g/. Children with difficulties have to learn these cues in more detail. Speech therapy can surely help in these cases.

Games and Activities to make Phonics fun

• “I spy” is something that begins with /p/ in the house. It can be better with peers around.
• Making a very own alphabet album. This can also be a video. Children can add on their favorite objects in it. And then relate to the respective sounds.
• The classic game of “Name, Place, Animal, and Thing”. Surely it can be more fun with peers together.
• Making word families with rhyming words. For example, Cat, Bat, Dat, Fat, etc.
• Make gift tokens or tags with initials of names. The activity also allows conversation on occasions like Friendship Day or Birthdays.
• Name tags with the same letter for peers can be another fun activity. Like, “Pretty Priya”, “Smarty Sam”, etc.
• Making a fruits and vegetable chart of the alphabet. Children can also be motivated to try new things with similar activities like this.
• Encouraging children to write “without judging their spellings” is important. It is a great tip to help them be confident about their skills. Sometimes children make up their own words with whatever they feel suitable. Encouraging these efforts would help them to keep on it and hence improve.

To conclude, it is worth knowing that children who can read and follow phonetic instructions are more likely to read new words by themselves. Also, creative writing skills are promoted with the knowledge of phonics.

Children with a sound sense of phonics are proven to be:

To read about Sight words