Books: Pig learn to count

If you are looking for a Chinese book to teach your little one how to count, this book is a good place to start. It features many different farm animals and pets, such as pig, duck, mouse, cat and dog. It tells the story of a mummy pig in search of her lost pigs, and along the way, the other animals join in the search. The numbers are simple, and are based on the types of animals eg two chicken, three pigs and so on. 

Books: Babyberry Pie

Written by Heather Vogel Frederick
Illustrated by Amy Schwartz

This is a delightful book about bathing a baby and putting him to sleep, and how he refuses to stay in the bath. It makes the process look very fun and lighthearted, by describing how to transform baby into a 'babyberry pie' such as putting sugar on his belly button and toes. What I like about this book is the rhythm and rhyme. It is an easy read, and babies and toddlers alike will like the large pictures inside.

Learning Jolly Phonics

As I shared previously, I attended a Jolly Phonics two-day workshop in mid-June to learn about phonics and 42 letter sounds, which is broken up into 7 groups of 6 sounds under this method. I may have been the only parent there, but at the end of the day, we were all there for the same goal, though mine was more personal.

Instructor Victoria Carlton hails from Perth, Western Australia and has her own school that uses the Jolly Phonics method, which was put together many years ago by a UK English teacher Sue Lloyd. Victoria got everyone warmed up from the start by asking us to choose a puppet that we like from a pile, and introduce ourselves. We had to also say why we chose that particular puppet. Besides teaching the various letter sounds and actions, Victoria also gave advice on teaching young children and various activities that can be used to help them learn the letter sounds, blended sounds and tricky words. She also shared tips on choosing suitable books and recommended a few. One very good idea she shared to encourage recognition of letters and sounds was to use an alphabet floor mat and getting the child to hop on the letter when you say it. For older children, to encourage them to write, a good idea is to use a letter box and exchange notes with the child. With this method, often, one can identify language concepts that the child has not grasped, eg spelling, and subsequently teach that concept again.

The course also covered simple grammar for older kids, which was interesting to me, though not applicable yet. Overall, the workshop was extremely interactive and I absolutely learnt a lot.

While EV is young for phonics training, Victoria shared that is was done to expose her to it in a relaxed way, and to increase her phonemic awareness. That is, the awareness that each letter makes a particular sound, and that these sounds combine to make words. For example, when we see a cat, we can say the word 'cat', break it up into the individual letter and sounds c-a-t, and then repeating the word again. Something like this can be incorporated into every day life and things, says Victoria, and will help her as she slowly gains more formal knowledge of the alphabet and letter sounds. This is definitely what I'm planning to do.

Starting a phonics adventure

Yes, I am quite particular about using proper English whether it’s written or spoken. Call me anal or whatever, but I feel it’s one of the basic requirements. So at home, I’m always peeved by the usage of phrases like ‘bread where?’, ‘you want what?’, ‘daddy do what?’ and so on. You get the idea. No, I don’t think that the whole family has to speak or write proper English. Being in Singapore, where there is a harmonious blend between proper English and Singlish, it is good to expose her to both. Hey! I do get into that ‘do what’ mode myself too! My point is that there needs to be at least one person in the family who uses proper English, and inculcate a sense of pronunciation, grammar and so on in both written and spoken English in the young one from a young age. This I think will help tremendously as EV goes into pre-school and then formal education.

I remember breaking up a word into its various parts and learning the spelling. Only recently, I learnt that this has to do with something called phonics. And it seems it is making a comeback to help children read and spell. I wanted to know how it works, so I can support EV in her learning, whether it is home teaching or supplementing school teaching with home teaching in future.

There are many methods of phonics teaching, eg Zoophonics, Letterland, Fitzroy Phonics and Jolly Phonics. Many of them are used by preschools as a way to teach phonics but only Jolly Phonics and Fitzroy Phonics conduct workshops for teachers and parents. In the end, I signed up for a two-day Jolly Phonics workshop as the method emphases more on letter sounds. Plus, it is used by the British Council for its Young Learners Programme, so it should be quite an effective method, I hope. More on that in another post, when I start my very own phonics adventure in June.