I hope that you and your child enjoyed yesterday’s phonics challenge.

When we have our letters and sounds time in nursery we spend part of that time learning the actions for each letter sound and write some of them on a daily basis.  Your challenge today is to look at the fantastic resources posted on April 20th by Mrs Giordano on the website that show the correct formation for each letter and how to do the accompanying action.  I would then like you to encourage your child to write their name looking carefully at each letter.  If they are very confident please help them to write their surname too.  Of course, if they are really enjoying this they could write other names within the family.  Do let us know how they get on by sending in photographs on evidence me.  Have fun and happy writing!

During the summer term (in normal times!) we are able to really challenge the older nursery children with their phonic (letters and sounds) knowledge as they have been working so hard all year.  The children usually know many of the 26 letter sounds by now (don’t worry if your child doesn’t every child is different).  At this point we stretch the children a little more using fun activities to try and read simple words.  As we are unable to do this at nursery at the moment we are hoping that you could try these out at home on a daily basis just for about 15-20 minutes a day.  The children usually love the games and it’s a great way to keep them entertained as well as learning.

My phonics challenge for  today can be found by googling phonics play on the internet.  Please then select the new version and input the current Username:march followed by the Password:home.  This takes you to lots of free games that in normal times schools are charged for but are kindly free during the lock down.  On the site I would like you to select the game Buried treasure at Phase 2 (this level is appropriate for the majority of the children going to school in September).  In this game the children have to drag coins with real words on them to the pirates’ treasure chest and drag the coins with fake words to the dustbin.  In order to help your child with this when you select which letter to use click on “revise all”.  Your child can then look at each letter on the coin saying their sounds out loud and then try to blend the sounds together to read the word.  This takes a bit of practise but we usually tap each sound on our arm as we read them and then stroke our arm as we blend them together.

Please have a go if you can and send in photo’s on the evidence me app.  More challenges to follow!

I hope that you’ve all had a good Easter and I wish that we were all back together for the start of term as we usually would be.  Thank you to everyone who has sent in photographs of their child’s activities at home using the evidence me app, we do love seeing what you are all up to.  Please keep checking out the website for lots of ideas for activities at home. I am hoping to get in touch with you all individually by phone over the course of the next few days for a catch up.  Please let me know how things are going and what you would like support with in these rather unusual times.

Hope to speak to you all soon

Lisa Curnow

Nursery  Teacher