Bought the Letterland Living ABC cd-rom sometime ago as I wanted to move beyond the 26 basic letter sounds + the 5 vowel sounds (i.e the vowels saying their letter names). There are more than 40 phonemes and mummy here is very lost.
Other than the cd-rom, we already had The ABC Book, Alphabet of Rhymes, and My ABC of Letters.
BUT I have not been using the cd-rom regularly with Jiale. The main reason is I saw him starting to get 'addicted' to it - everytime he saw me using the laptop, he asked for 'abc' : ( No tantrums when I refused, but I foresaw it happening. So I decided to put it aside for the time being and only let him watch occasionally. Now we are just reading the Letterland books and listening to the audio CDs.
I also read the Letterland Teacher's Guide but did not find it very useful. Instead, I have bought two more Letterland storybooks - Beyond ABC and Far Beyond ABC. These are for sounds like 'sh', 'ch' etc, and too chim for Jiale now. They are mainly for me to learn and remember what the digraphs and trigraphs sound like, as the books are stories of why 's' and 'h' don't make their usual sounds when they are together. Jiale also likes to flip through the storybooks : )
On a sidenote, I read that there are concerns about children being dependent on the Letterland characters to recognize the letters, e.g. they only know 'c' when they see the cat, but not when it's the plain letter. Jiale has no such issue, probably because he learnt his alphabet just using the plain letters, before I started him on Letterland (to learn & reinforce phonics).
On top of that, I have also been exploring the other phonics learning systems such as Jolly Phonics. I like the Jolly Songs as they sound just like normal children's songs, i.e. a nursery rhymes with adapted lyrics, so we can listen to the CD while we are playing with other things. Letterland songs, on the other hand, sound more boring :p I will continue to look out for and explore other ways for me to learn phonics and to teach Jiale, after all, what I do not know, I cannot teach.
(By the way, the conclusion is, I am STILL lost about phonics. I hope very much Jiale is not an auditory learner, cos my spoken English cannot make it. Hope hope hope he's visual or whatever!!)
Showing posts with label phonics. Show all posts
Showing posts with label phonics. Show all posts
Thursday, June 14, 2012
Wednesday, March 28, 2012
I'm back!
Used to have a blog long ago.. but had not updated for quite some time, can't find it anymore : / Fortunately I can use back the same blog title! Though it's not that apt now as I will be mainly blogging about my children here, I shall use it for 怀旧purpose. But of course, I am even more 幸福 now with two children! : )
A few ideas of what to blog about:
1) What we play. I get most of my ideas from other blogs as I am definitely lacking in creativity, but those are usually non-local blogs. I will share where/how I find the materials (or substitutes) needed for the activity.
2) Just ordered Letterland to start on phonics with Jiale. Phonics is really giving me a big headache (the biggest of all academic stuff!!) cos it wasn't in the syllabus when I was in school eons ago. Gotta start from scratch. Leapfrog DVDs have been a great help cos now Jiale and I know the basic sounds of the 26 letters in the alphabet. However quite a few letters have more than one sound, and there are more chim things like blending & dunno-what-else down the road..
I chose Letterland for very simple reasons. Lol. Because another mummy is using it, and she is very dedicated to homelearning with her daughter despite being a FTWM (*kowtow*). Thus, I believe she would have diligently done adequate research before choosing Letterland. She has also been using it for some time, so it should be 'safe'!
http://beanienus.blogspot.com/2012/02/world-of-letterland.html
Urmm, second reason is even more bo liao. It's because I already have 3 Letterland books, haha. Bought when Jiale was... umm.. 3 months old, maybe? That time, anyhow buy.. Now then I realise how useful they are! So, anyway, I shall be updating on our phonics adventure!
3) Can't remember what else. Spent too much time on the 2nd point. Lol. Never mind.
A few ideas of what to blog about:
1) What we play. I get most of my ideas from other blogs as I am definitely lacking in creativity, but those are usually non-local blogs. I will share where/how I find the materials (or substitutes) needed for the activity.
2) Just ordered Letterland to start on phonics with Jiale. Phonics is really giving me a big headache (the biggest of all academic stuff!!) cos it wasn't in the syllabus when I was in school eons ago. Gotta start from scratch. Leapfrog DVDs have been a great help cos now Jiale and I know the basic sounds of the 26 letters in the alphabet. However quite a few letters have more than one sound, and there are more chim things like blending & dunno-what-else down the road..
I chose Letterland for very simple reasons. Lol. Because another mummy is using it, and she is very dedicated to homelearning with her daughter despite being a FTWM (*kowtow*). Thus, I believe she would have diligently done adequate research before choosing Letterland. She has also been using it for some time, so it should be 'safe'!
http://beanienus.blogspot.com/2012/02/world-of-letterland.html
Urmm, second reason is even more bo liao. It's because I already have 3 Letterland books, haha. Bought when Jiale was... umm.. 3 months old, maybe? That time, anyhow buy.. Now then I realise how useful they are! So, anyway, I shall be updating on our phonics adventure!
3) Can't remember what else. Spent too much time on the 2nd point. Lol. Never mind.
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