Reading

It's ok, I'm not going to brag about how many reading books my miniature genius has brought home from school so far in the school year, or reproduce the comments from her teachers in her reading log. Some things are strictly for my own smug self.  I do need to say though, despite our school not using the Biff, Chip and Kipper books, we've got a few at home, and I want to set social services onto that family. Not only do the parents give them ridiculous names, but they couldn't be trusted to manage a morning poo without help, never mind raise a family.

However. Before the summer break, Squeaky's nursery class teacher encouraged us to work on 3 letter CVC (consonant, vowel, consonant) words with her, to support her in-school learning. You know, the kind of words that won't get you very far on Countdown, but are pretty useful in day to day life.

Now I love a challenge, and putting together a cheap teaching resource (comes from trying to manage a training section with no training budget), so I got a cheapy spiral bound notebook, and sat down with scissors and coloured pens, and *that* look in my eyes.  Scissors to divide each page into two.  On the left hand section, all the consonants, plus CH, SH & TH.  On the right, various vowel and consonant pairs that can be used with the leading consonants to form popular three or 4 letter words.

M-A-T

CAT, SAT, RAT, FAT, HAT, THAT

BAR, CAR, FAR, JAR
HEN, PEN, MEN
HIP, LIP, SHIP, CHIP
BIN, TIN, GIN?

Mummy's special pop

Ooops.  And that's only the start. What seemed like such a good idea, and such a cheap resource takes so much of my concentration. I can't exactly let her learn all the possible words in the book, can I? I can see the teacher's face now.  And worse still, Squeaky is starting to try and build her own words, and asks "what does G-O-F spell?", so the day I get asked about S-E-X can't be far off.

Bring on parents' evening, I've got some questions!

Living with a MAT

It was parents' evening earlier this week at Squeaky's school.  Yes, the same school that she only started going to, for 2 hours a day, at the start of September.  They don't waste time.  Aside from the shock to the system that a parents' evening bears no resemblance to the concept of "evening" as understood by any other part of civilisation, starting as it did at 3.30pm, I was looking forward to it.

Squeaky gets regular homework, roughly every other week, which I do my best to help with - though google did come to my aid when I was faced with a circle map, a concept I'd never heard of before.  But the school also run a monthly family challenge called Family Values, and I was hopelessly confused by it, so I wanted to ask some questions about that.

Well, anyway.  Squeaky's teacher is lovely, we had a comfy seat in the staff room & she proceeded to tell us that our precocious little madam is, well, just that, in not so many words.  Apparently she's smarter than the average Squeak, and they want to put her on the More Able & Talented programme (MAT).  At 3.  Having only been there 7 weeks.

Not this sort of mat
Image courtesy of  John Kasawa/Freedigitalphotos.net

Well, obviously we already knew she was a small genius, what parent doesn't?  But it's rather nice to have it confirmed by someone who knows about these things.  It's such a cliché of parenting in the internet age, every Mumsnet/Netmums member's child is reading War & Peace at 2, and composing symphonies over their home-made sugar free baby led weaning flapjacks.  And I'm secretly Kate Moss.

I loathe competitive parenting.  I've agonised over telling, well, anyone about this (and was beaten to the decision by Squeaky Daddy who posted it as his facebook status within half an hour).  I've told people I trust, but there's no way on this little green earth I'm mentioning it to the mums in the school gate queue.  After all, all I know of their children is the few minutes a day I see them outside the gates, I don't know how easy or hard they're finding things.  Wouldn't it feel terrible if your child was falling behind at a young age, and someone was bragging about their tiny overachiever?

So, once they go back to school after half term, Squeaky will have her own Play Plan, designed to give her some extra challenges & extra stimulation to move her forward & reach her potential.  It's something I think is very positive - the same terminology is used - Play Plan, Individual Education Plan, for children with additional learning needs at either end of the spectrum.  I'm encouraged by the recognition that smart children need support as well as those who are struggling.  It didn't happen in my day (old fogey that I am), I remember being bored rigid by the school's choice of books for me, reading Judy Blume books long before I was old enough to understand what periods were, and effectively being left to self-teach in maths because I was working a full term ahead of the rest of the class.

So wish us luck, we've got a challenge ahead of us.  Keeping Squeaky motivated, maintaining the momentum from school, and just trying to keep up with her.  I'll do my best to record what life is like in the MAT programme, or at least as much as Squeaky will tell me of it.

Read Write Phonics App Review

I mentioned before that I am now somehow the owner of a phone that's considerably smarter than me.  So much so that I'm still having difficulty working out how to answer calls, and only discovered yesterday that it wasn't set up to receive picture messages.  This gives you some idea of my phone-related talents.

Typically of a 21st century child though, Squeaky has no such concerns.  My old, non-functioning dumb-phones (the opposite of a smart phone) hold no interest for her any more.  Mine is fascinating.  I don't really want to encourage her to see my phone as a toy, it's on a 2 year contract & I'd kind of like to get to the end of the 2 years without wrecking it.  But there are times, supervised, when a phone is a rather good distraction.  I'd like the distractions she gets involved with to have some sort of educational value, rather than just cartoons.

I was really pleased to be offered the chance to review Read Write Phonics, a new app developed for Android phones (an iPhone version is being developed to be released later in the year).  The app is designed for children aged 3-6 years, and aims to help teach them the 44 phonic sounds that make up the English language (and you thought the alphabet was just 26 letters!), write basic letter shapes, and how to blend the different sounds to make words.

B-A-T. Bat.

At 2, Squeaky is still a little bit young for the finer points of the app, but that didn't stop her trying.  She loved the sun logo at the start, and was fascinated by the voice reading the letters and words, and did start to copy the words after a few attempts.  While she is playing on her own in this photo, she can't actually operate the app herself yet, so we play together.  That makes it a great bonding activity, as we can talk about the words as well.

The app was developed by parents Simon & Seema, eager to encourage a love of reading in their son, and to help him on his way before starting school. They found there wasn't an app on the market that did this, and so they made their own!  They researched phonics programmes used in schools, and created an app that works alongside these, using the correct sounds, and encouraging children to do the same.

The app is voiced by a friendly sounding female voice, which is lovely and clear, without an accent.  Squeaky liked the voice, and enjoyed starting to copy her in the Read and Phonics sections of the app.  The Read section has beautiful, simple, illustrations of the words, and this is the section we've spent the most time with so far, as she's able to recognise the pictures, and to start to recognise that the written word means the same thing as the picture and spoken word.

The Write section is still far in advance of Squeaky's capabilities at this stage, but in the interests of a full review, I tried it out myself.  I liked the little green pencil that traces the letter shapes before you take your turn, it really reminded me of the "magic pencil" in Words and Pictures on tv when I was in school.  I found tracing the letters well enough to get a 3 star result quite difficult, though that might be because my sausage-fingers are too big and I couldn't see where I was going. As the app is designed for children, with smaller hands, I suspect they would find it much easier.  (Also, I have appalling handwriting, that might have contributed.  This is a blog and not a handwritten diary for a reason, you know!)

I really like the fact that the app does work on different levels, there are simple words and longer ones, and the three areas of phonic learning, meaning the app can grow with the child. I think that represents great value for money, rather than purchasing an app that concentrates on a single aspect, then having to look for another as your child progresses.

Take a look at this video, which shows the app in action.



Read Write Phonics is available from Google Play for £1.49.

I was provided with a free download of the Read Write Phonics app for the purposes of this review. I was not told what to write, and all opinions are my own.  I am not a member of any affiliate schemes or programmes, links are provided for your convenience, I will not receive any reward for their use.