If you’re a 90s kid this word will trigger.
Phonics phew I said it. If your reading journey was speckled with trouble like mine then this word hits differently. Phonics at its core is matching letter sounds to letter shapes. If we zoom in even further, to strip the power out of letters, they are just little squiggle lines that we’ve all agreed over the years say this sound. If we know how to read, then we know that letters say different things at different times. That’s a whole different post.
Phonics is taking the phonemes we’ve talked about here and attaching them with letter shapes. This is why step one is so crucial. We want to get the kids comfortable with sounds before we move on to attaching a shape to the sound. In my opinion, we don’t want to get ahead of ourselves by jumping straight to letters because it can get overwhelming.
Why does this matter?
We want to get our kids simple confidence because we throw them to the letter wolves so to speak. Phonics is a very large animal, because of the nature of the English language. If this is the method of reading you’re teaching. American English is a hodgepodge, like its people, of different cultures. This means you have Latin, French, German, and many other rules at play with just one mode of language. We want to simplify this large language as much as possible. This also comes with the importance of not overwhelming you the teacher.
The soapbox I’ll jump on is that most of our letter sounds do not say the name we’ve given them over the years, like the letter S. S has two sounds, and at the end of a word, it says a sound like a Z. in a word it can share the sound that C can make, like a snake. So why in the world do we call it “ES” beats me?
Okay, tell me more
This is why doing simple activities makes a world of difference when setting up this reading foundation. Movement and kids are key. According to some research, adding movement to language increases learning by 90%. Why? In our brains, our nerves like to make connections to solidify what we are learning. It helps the lesson become stronger. When we give our brain a movement such as tracing letter shapes in the sand and we feel this with our fingers and say the sounds with our mouth, we’ve given our brain two connections. Just like that the letter has a better chance of sticking in our brains.
This is where you come in.
How can you do this today? Simple, take some shaving cream (or paint, sand, or a maker) show your child one letter, and say the sound or sounds. Slowly, and I mean S L O W LYYYY we want them to be thinking about how the letter they are looking at makes a sound in their mouth. This is like language math SOUND + LETTER SHAPE = READING (Check out this article)
SOUND + LETTER SHAPE = READING
So grab some shaving cream, show them a letter, and say “This is a letter B it says /b/ I push my lips in and together, and I push some air out of my mouth and add a little voice so my vocal cords vibrate. Watch how I write this letter, I go down then I make two bumps, now I’m going to say the sound when I write the letter.”
If you have an older child, then have them practice their sight words, larger letter chucks, like /ough/ or /ing/ silent /e/ words. The more they practice the more they will make brain connections and reading will become their own.
If you’d like a cheat sheet for letter sounds, here is a flash card I’ve made. If you also want to make it cheap and easy ( which I prefer) then take some notecards cut them in half and write the letters on the side in upper case, then lower case.
Thanks for reading, I hope this inspired you to work on some phonics with your kiddo today!
