Articles
Apr 03, 2013
3 Ways to Teach Children Phonics
One of the most common difficulties a child will encounter when learning to read is the failure to understand phonics, that is, how written spellings represent the sounds of spoken words. To help teach your children phonics skills, try engaging them in activities at home that incorporate the following: ### Play Playing with your child is actually enormously significant to their language development. As you play with them, in whatever activity, whether it’s building Lego, block towers, train tracks, playing with dolls in their dollhouse, or drawing, be intentional about using language. This can feel stilted and unnatural at first,...
Apr 03, 2013
Sight Word Games for Children
Learning sight words is one of the first steps that a child needs to take on their learning to read journey. Sight word games are one of the most effective ways to teach children how to automatically identify these words, making learning fun and motivational, and therefore all the more effective. ## What are Sight Words? Sight words are words like ‘it’, ‘the’, ‘and’, ‘is’ etc that appear frequently in early level texts. These words do not have a concrete image that accompanies them, and are highly dependent upon the context in which they are read, therefore they need to...
Apr 03, 2013
Story Reading for Kids – 5 Tips
Reading stories together with your child is one of the best ways that you can help them develop the confidence and skills to eventually learn to read on their own. Try some of the following tips to make story reading times for kids all the more fun and effective: ## 1. Regular Reading Time Make sure you designate a regular reading time and place where you and your child can read in comfort and free from any distractions. Your reading place doesn’t have to be indoors, you can try going outside to the park or maybe even the beach to...
Mar 18, 2013
Kids Phonics Games
## What is Phonics? Phonics is the understanding of how letters are linked to the individual sounds in words, called phonemes. It’s the knowledge of how letters and sounds relate creating their appropriate sound and spelling pattern. This is known as the alphabetic principle, and a thorough understanding of this, especially by playing phonics games, goes a long way toward helping kids learn how to read. ## Synthetic and Analytic phonics There are two approaches to phonics instruction – analytic and synthetic. Analytic phonics instruction teaches children to recognise entire words by sight. Once they have learnt a word by...