A Simple St Patrick’s Day and Rainbow Themed Phonics Activity!

My little boy (5) was becoming bored with his homework recently (ssssh don’t tell his teacher) so I have been coming up with fun ways for him to work on his phonics- initial sounds and sight words! This activity can be used for any of the sounds but for demo purposes I have used the first 6 Jolly Phonics sounds (the phonics programme that a lot of schools in Ireland and the UK use).

Materials:

• black paper
• large sheet of cartridge paper
• paint
• glue
• gold coins or Connect 4 pieces
• picture or drawing of a leprechaun
• stickers
• post-its

What to do:

• I made a little crock of gold out of black paper and stuck a small box onto the back of it.
• I then glued the box onto a poster of a rainbow that we painted together along with a little leprechaun!
• The gold coins are pieces from Connect 4!
• I wrote the 6 letters, in this case: s, a, t, i, n, and p on stickers which I then stuck onto the “coins” and placed them in the crock of gold!
• I then wrote a number of words made up of these sounds on post-its.

So, how does he use it?

• My son picks a post-it, sticks it onto the crock- sounds out the word, names the sounds and letters and looks for the correct coins in the crock!
• He then spells the word using the coin, sounds it out and reads the word.
• Then he repeats with a new word.
• This is pretty much the same as the activity he has to do for homework every night with his little pouch of letters and word list but the novelty of using “coins” to do it has renewed his interest in his homework!

This is a very simple activity, nothing particularly innovative or new about it but I always find it helpful to liven up everyday homework or classroom activities every now and again!

How do you make homework or phonics learning more exciting and fun for your children?

Have fun

Ciara xox