Nursery
Level 1 Phonics
When our children are in Nursery, we introduce early reading skills that will develop a love for reading in the future. Before they can learn to read, children need to develop their listening and visual skills. A crucial listening skill is phonological awareness, the ability to identify different sounds such as the different endings of the words "cut" and "cup." This develops naturally as children learn to listen to sounds around them. Music, poems, nursery rhymes and everyday sounds are all key elements in developing this skill. The visual skills which help children to acquire letter knowledge include shape recognition and the ability to visually sort objects.
Ways you can support your child with Level 1:
- Go on a listening walk... What can you hear?
- Have a go at drumming on different items outside and comparing the sounds
- Can you have a go at making sound shakers e.g. filled with water, lentils, rice.
- Compare and match the sound shakers.
- Have a go at playing instruments alongside reading a story and making loud and quiet sounds.
- Have a go at singing songs and action rhymes.
- Begin listening to music and developing a sound vocabulary.
- Read a rhyming story (You can find lots online - Julia Donaldson has published lots of rhyming books),
- Play rhyming bingo,
- Have a go at clapping out the syllables in words and find the odd one out.
- Play I-Spy type games focusing on what sound different items begin with Can your child begin matching objects which start with the same sound?
- You could make a Phonics robot using a box - children can feed objects into the robot's mouth and then the grown up can sound out the name of the object in a robot voice - /c/-/u/-/p/ cup, with the children joining in.
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