Phonics for Kids

Is phonics all important?  When should we start our kids on phonics?  How should we start?  Should we be investing in classes or cards that costs up to hundreds?  When will my kid learn how to place words together and start reading?

I have some experience to share now that my son is turning 4.

Phonics is very important due to the simple reason that words are made up and sounded through phonics.  Once a child knows the sound of the alphabets, placing them together and sounding a word should be easy.  I started Ricco with 'zoophonics' class whereby he learnt the sound of the 26 alphabets via a connection between action, animals and sound.  This methodology of teaching phonics works especially well on very young kids as they are still at the exploratory stage of learning.  Parents might not be able to know how kids at very young ages learn best.  Are they 'active' learners (learning through actions), 'sight' learners (learning through seeing), or auditory learners (learning through sounds)?  This methodology combines all 3 and works on kids memory and association. eg : 1 action is associated with each alphabet and animals.  Children are fast learners and before you even know it, they are able to sound the 26 alphabets. 

Attending class is a headstart but this must be accompanied with consistent home learning and individual teaching.  This acts as a reinforcement to what they learnt in school.  Yes, this means parents and kids alike, need to practice and practice at home.  There is really no need to invest in flashcards that costs hundreds of dollars.  A home made set is good enough. 

I recycled old name cards and used crayons to simply write the alphabets.  I try to go through these alphabets on a daily basis.  It takes nothing more than 3minutes.

alphabets

Once the child is able to sound the alphabets, the next step is really about placing the alphabets together and getting them to read it as a word. As in "c", "a", "t" forms cat.  I am currently at this stage of piecing together words ending with "at" as in "cat", "fat", "bat", "hat", "mat", "pat", "rat", "sat".  This is working well and I am happy with progress.