When two vowels go walking, the first does the talking.

So goes the first rule that Mia is learning in Jolly Phonics. We were thrilled to find a program that doesn't use a US accent as this means less translation for accent. Heck me speaking with a New Zealand accent and Mia with an Australian is bad enough without adding US english to the mix!

I thought I'd share a little of what we are doing with Mia to teach her to read. At the moment it's all very casual. She is still in Kindergarten this year, so next year for her official first year of school we will be much the same but aim to work daily on this. She has some Jolly Phonics workbooks. We are working through them slowly learning how to write and read the sounds.
You know I don't know how to blog without photos so here you are:
Mia has just started Jolly Phonics Workbook 4. Today she is learning ai as in "rain"


After Mia did her page we looked at some simple words on cards for her to sound out. Then we sounded out some more words as she wrote them onto the white board.

Here are just a few of the resources we are using

The yellow are the workbooks. The red books are early readers. Once Mia has done Workbook 5 she will be able to pick these books up and read them, understanding how to sound out every word. The golden rule for phonics is that we never present a word for Mia to read that she hasn't been given the tools to decode.
We also have wall charts, computer games and other activities.

Jolly Learning and I buy it all through the wonderful Book Depository