Phonics learning with the Alphablocks

Earlier this week my Alphablocks DVD competition closed (I'll be posting the winners soon) but today I wanted to share our thoughts on the very first Alphablocks DVD.

We only started watching Alphablocks on CBeebies a little while ago when Lara first started learning basic phonics at nursery; Lara instantly took to it and quite regularly requests to watch her new DVD. The DVD has 18 episodes on it, starting with a basic introduction to the phonics letter sounds. The episodes are short and easily digestible.

Each episode features one or more of the letter blocks as the focus. As the blocks travel through their little world they meet other letters and every time the letters hold hands, they make a word. The sounds of the letters are sounded out individually by the blocks and then the word is repeated.

Both myself and Mr. B enjoy watching Lara when she is absorbed in the Alphablocks. I hear her making the sounds of the letters and saying the words. I can also see that little glint of recognition when she notices a pattern in some words. I've always said that watching Lara learn is one of the most rewarding parts of being a parent and when she is watching Alphablocks I get that tingly feeling. Lara doesn't realise she's learning because she is enjoying the programme.

The new DVD comes with a parents guide AND a free Alphablocks alphabet poster. Lara, very surprisingly, seemed uninterested in her poster but I really think this is because she is sooooo interested in the DVD. She more or less ripped open the packaging which is wonderful to see for a programme with such strong educational background behind it.

So far, I think Lara's favourite episode features the "e" noise.  The E alphablock has quite a strong female (?) character and many of the words that feature the "e" sound are ones that Lara can recognise and repeat herself.  Interestingly though, Lara tends to struggle with reading the letter e (in comparison to the other vowel sounds) so I'm really hoping that watching the Alphablocks can help her with this.

You can find out more about the new DVD at www.alphablocks.tv .

The Froobles First Words Magnetic Play and Learn Book Review

First Words is part of the Froobles Magnetic Play and Learn series of books which also features shapes, counting and colours. The Froobles First Words by Ella Davies is perfect for Lara who, approaching 3 and a half, is starting to learn to spell.

The book features 10 hard board pages, each with a picture of some of the Froobles fruit and vegetable characters. Each page has a single sentence that I read to Lara and in the sentence there is a highlighted word that I then ask her to spell.

At the top of each page that word is marked out in large grey letters and your child has to find the correct magnetic pieces to fill in the spaces. The words are all three or four letters long and are all words with strong vowel sounds, some short vowels and the occasional long vowel noise such as "ee".

Lara very quickly grasped the context of the book and set to work filling in the gaps. By the end of the book I suspect she had worked out that she didn't need to spell the word herself because it was printed in grey before her! However, she does invest a LOT of concentration scouring the table for the correct magnetic letters to place on the page and her face beams when she finds them all and the word is complete. We take great pleasure in grabbing all of the pieces from the page before turning it to work on another challenge.

Lara is now quite familiar with the Froobles characters and I think this contributes to the fun she has when using the book.

I don't know how you would achieve this but I can't help thinking that there would be an extra level of challenge if you could hide away the greyed out letters to make your child try and spell the word themselves without a prompt. Perhaps a pop-up flap could do this? while I appreciate that there is still a LOT of learning value in copying the letters of a word, I think that without this added challenge, Lara may very quickly grow out of this book as she has already learned to blindly copy the letters she sees in front of her instead of sitting down and trying to work out in her head the sound of the next letter she needs to find.

First Words (Froobles Magnetic Play and Learn) has a RRP of £5.99.