/ck/ and /ee/

*Photos coming later!

Thought I might post about what we did a few weeks prior to starting this blog. At the time I wasn't theming the lessons so much, so we just worked around the sounds. Not all the activities took place on the same day!

/ck/ as in duck.
1. I drew a picture of a duck with the words "ck as in duck" below it, and then a list of words with ck in them. I tried to pick words he would find interesting, like muck, truck, track and kick, and avoid words with other odd sounds such as chicken. He sounded them out with me.
2. I made a matching game with pictures and words, again using the words he is interested in and that are drawable! Then I filmed him matching them up, for the grandparents to see. The cards can be used for a memory game too.
3. We made a page for his lapbook, letting him cut out my duck picture to stick on it, and looked through some old magazines from the recycling pile to find objects with ck in them, which he cut out and stuck on too. Then he watched me write the names on.
4. We did some writing in a wipe-clean book my mother got for him. I encouraged him to trace over the letters c and k but in the end he just did whatever letters he wanted.
5. I read him various stories including the amazingly out-of-print Pumpernickel tickle and mean green cheese. So glad we own this!
6. A themed meal, including blackcurrant juice, crackers, pumpernickel bread, dill pickles and cheese of course. I think we had this twice, Froglet being a big fan of picnic-style meals.
7. Baking! Snickerdoodle cookies, a new recipe to us but, as it turns out, wonderful for baking with kids. Froglet helped measure and mix, and then rolled the dough balls in the cinnamon sugar for me.

/ee/ as in tree.
1-4. The first four activities were the same as above, but with a list of ee words, which of course included "wee"! He was pleased with that. The matching game this time used some ee words and some of the old ck words. I didn't film this one though.
5. Reading: the Sneetches
6. We planted some cress seeds, and some pear and apple pips.
7. Sound-of-the-week tree - we haven't actually done this yet although I have bought the construction paper for it. The idea, from SOTW, is that you cut out a tree with bare branches, and then stick a new leaf on each time you learn a new sound, with the sound written on it of course.
8. Food: Leek soup. This was not a success. Froglet isn't always such a huge fan of soup, and not only did he not like this one, but neither did The Engineer. Egg and cress sandwiches (grown from the seeds we had planted) didn't go down too well either: he's not keen on scrambled egg, although he did like the cress. But not to worry. Cheese, a perennial favourite in our family, also has the ee sound in it!

The lessons continue even though I'm now teaching /er/, as when something relevant comes up I draw his attention to it, or sometimes he points it out to me! Today we are planting a seed garden in a tray. But more on that later.

Learning to read

I am pulling together a bunch of things from various sites to help me teach Froglet some phonics. He already knows the alphabet thanks to the wonderful Starfall website, and as he's started spelling out words to himself while playing, I think now it's time for the more complicated stuff.
Sound of the week is a great place to start, with a different page for each sound (e.g. /ee/), including a theme to match the sound (e.g. trees), book ideas, rhymes or poems, and art projects. So far we have done the first two sounds off this page: /ck/ and /ee/. Other sites I have been using include the brilliant Phonics, and the BBCs Words and Pictures.

After thinking about it quite a bit, and to-ing and fro-ing between various possibilities, I've decided to link the sounds I teach to whatever longer theme I'm currently on, rather than follow the order set out at SOTW or Phonics. And as we're doing flowers and gardening at the moment, next up are /er/ and /ow/ (as in cow not grow). I have ordered a book about plants, which hasn't arrived yet, but fortunately we do have a book on weather, which also has the /er/ sound in it, and as it's particularly rainy at the moment this will be a good place to start tomorrow.

In fact I've ordered a whole bunch of books, which may get reviewed on here at some point. They are:
How Flowers Grow (Usborne Beginners)
Summer Nature Activities for Children (by Irmgard Kutsch, I think)
Floppy Phonics (Stage 1+)
Miffy in the Garden
Things that Go (Trace, Stick and Learn)
Stories Jesus Told (by Nick Butterworth/Mick Inkpen)
and several less educational ones for our own entertainment.

Froglet saw me ordering the Miffy book and said that he wanted one too. I said it would have to be with his own money, so he chose Miffy is crying (!) and now owes me 3 pounds. His first book purchase of his very own!