Butterfly Phonics

For the past few weeks we have been attending a phonics session with another local childminder. I have been super impressed by the boys interest in the session as well as the aspects of learning covered within the hour and the huge range of amazing resources that Hazel brings each week.

The session starts by looking at two or three sounds of the phonetic alphabet, helping the boys recognise but more importantly attempt to sound the sounds as well as learning the accompanying actions. The session is very gentle and adapted to each child's needs so for the quieter ones they can watch and learn whilst others prefer to join in the more musical aspect when we sing the sounds.

Following this a session on fine motor skills is incorporated. This varies each week and so far we have had colours and turning cogs through to farmyard animals and using tweezers for picking up vegetables and fruit to tie in with the harvest festival.

A final part of the session focusses on counting and awareness of numbers This week's activity was farmyard bingo. Other activities have included rolling a dice and removing the resulting number of autumn leaves from the tree.

The session finishes with some singing and dancing followed by some quiet relaxing reflection time although the boys often fund this highly amusing! This is a great session that enhances their literacy and communication, understanding the world through the relevance of the topics and their numeracy. Additionally the chance to be expressive is offered through music and dance as well as meeting and socialising with different children. We love this session and will definitely attend again.