Pink Peg Pigs

 

  Our pink peg pigs (try saying that fast) are the final installment of our phonic craft. The children have spent the week learning to robot (sound out), read, and write 'ig' words. For each of the past 5 weeks we have concentrated on a different  short vowel sound every week. A as in cat, U as in bug, E as in hen, O as in dog, and I as in pig. Some of these vowel sounds are hard for the children to make, so the practice we have had as made a huge difference to the clarity of sound.

Although it might seem odd 'i' is one of my favourite sounds to teach. When we are learning what sound the letter 'i' makes I talk about how Inky the Mouse spilled ink on her whiskers and the sound 'i' makes is Inky trying to clean the ink off them, 'i, i, i, icky ink'. We pretend to be Inky Mouse and stroke our fingers over our pretend whiskers while we say the sound with lots of expression.

After 5 weeks of practice nearly the whole class is able to listen to a cvc (consonant, vowel, consonant) word, sound it out by moving their arms like a robot (one movement for each sound), and write down the sounds they have heard. This skill has already started to transfer to their reading and writing books. And several parents have mentioned that their child is practicing being a robot at home too!

There are some words that the children will attempt to robot and will unable to. Some of these words are sight words like 'my' or 'come' and some the children will not yet know the necessary digraphs or trigraphs , words such as 'home', 'click', or 'sheep'. When you are reading or writing at home with your child you can either tell your child what the word is, "That word is a sight word from your list - my" and let them carry on reading. Or help the say the first sound and encourage them to think about what makes sense. Or if it is appropriate and if you feel up to it you can teach them the single sound that two of the letters make (the digraph), "The two e's make an ee sound - sh-ee-p-sheep" or "In this word the e at the end, makes the o say it's name - h-oh-m-home." (At school we call that a split digraph - a consonant in between two vowels).

We have also been reading this poem - 'This Little Pig Went to Market' and spending time each day taking off our shoes and socks and tickling our toes as we recite the poem. Taking off and putting on our shoes and socks has been good practice for getting undressed and dressed for swimming, which starts in two weeks.

Check out these posts to learn more about our phonics programme and crafts.

Watch Out, Bats About - 'at' words.

Dalmatian Dogs - 'og' words.

Happy Hens - 'en' words. 

Lovely Ladybugs - 'ug' words. 

I love peg animals - we have made the peg bats mentioned above, and last year my class made these peg elephants.