Bit confused over the Alphabet

Just a thought if your ever really confused over the whole phonic/grapheme/letters and how to make learning it all easier if you go on the dfes website and download the letters and sounds framework it might help little it really helped me at first as i was used to teaching the older kids xoxo

I think it's worth remembering also that what works for one child may not necessarily work for another. You might find different tactics work with each.

They also will often say a word that starts with a letter rather than the letter, for example E is egg. Is this normal? I do say 'yes E for Egg or E for elephant etc' is it just a matter of keep repeating the same thing over and over?

I was told once that it's better to say Egg starts with E rather than E is for Egg as E is for Egg can be understood as E is only for Egg. Not sure if that helps!

Just a thought if your ever really confused over the whole phonic/grapheme/letters and how to make learning it all easier if you go on the dfes website and download the letters and sounds framework it might help little it really helped me at first as i was used to teaching the older kids xoxo

This document is fab for explaining all the terms and also gives you the stages to go through in teaching phonics ( not that I am suggesting you follow it slavishly!) There are also tons of online resources to support phonics.

Yes we found a few websites but the one India enjoyed the best was starfall.com She still regularly asks to look at it and sings some of the songs (listen to the short a sound a-a-a-a-a!)

starfall is a big hit here too!

We do a bit of both sounds and letter names, though our main issue at the moment is that nursery does the 'uh' on the end of every sound and I don't, so I'm always saying 'nnnnnn for Natalie' and she's coming out with 'nuh' for Natalie.

I'm a primary school teacher too trained in early years and we do both. The best phonics system I've come across is THRASS (sorry but I really dislike Jolly Phonics)-we teach it in school but had to go for training to use it so don't think it's available for home education.

Sorry, gone on a tagent there. Basically, we do both, the letter sound and then it's name-for example, the sound for apple is 'a' and it's name is 'ay'. There are 44 sounds in our language buy only 26 letters, so for children to be able to read and have a go at pronouncing words, they need all of it. A hard 'c' for example can be spelt in so many ways, like 'ch' in school, or 'c' in cat or 'k' in king. English really is a tricky but I believe the earlier they know there are many ways to spell a sound the easier it will be for them when it comes to reading and writing.

Good luck with it. The letter and sounds document mentioned above is a good place to start as the national curriculum is now moving towards this way of learning, and away from systems like Jolly Phonics.

starfall is a big hit here too!

We do a bit of both sounds and letter names, though our main issue at the moment is that nursery does the 'uh' on the end of every sound and I don't, so I'm always saying 'nnnnnn for Natalie' and she's coming out with 'nuh' for Natalie.

That can be so confusing for LOs, especially when they come to write and they put an 'u' at the end of most words/letters

starfall is a big hit here too!

We do a bit of both sounds and letter names, though our main issue at the moment is that nursery does the 'uh' on the end of every sound and I don't, so I'm always saying 'nnnnnn for Natalie' and she's coming out with 'nuh' for Natalie.

That can be so confusing for LOs, especially when they come to write and they put an 'u' at the end of most words/letters

I know, it drove me nuts when I taught in KS1 which is why I'm trying to teach mine the pure sounds, but when nursery use Letterland and the 'uh' sound on everything and she's there 3 days a week it isn't helping!!