Phase 1 Phonics

Earliest Reading

The reading journey is incredible. The joy a child feels when they successfully decode a word, sentence or story is very satisfying and beautiful to witness. Yet the steps to reach this milestone go back much further than we might realise. Children develop the skills and tools to begin reading from a very early age.

Phonics is traditionally taught in six phases, up until year 2 (in the UK education system). Those who have gaps may need support with different phases later on. Each phase increases in complexity as children learn to decode and read increasingly harder sounds and words.

Phase 1 Phonics

Whilst schools usually begin teaching Phase 2 Phonics in a classroom setting, there is a whole phase that is essential prior to that. Phase 1 is about sounds. It's your child's encounter with sound recognition before they are expected to place any letters to that sound. It's about helping your child distinguish between different sounds, rhythms and patterns. It's about articulating different sounds and playing with them.

Here is a list of games that you can play with your child to help them develop the early skills that are necessary for reading. The seven different aspects of Phase 1 are covered here.

They are:

1. Environmental sounds

2. Instrumental sounds

3. Body percussion

4. Rhythm and rhyme

5. Alliteration

6. Voice sounds

7. Oral blending and segmenting

The key to Phase 1 Phonics is little and often. You can spend 3 or 4 minutes a day on one of these games. It's not meant to be something you spend hours setting up, hours doing and then hours cleaning away. Rather, seek out those little opportunities that present themselves, day in, day out. For example, you'll see that doing voices and sound effects is something that comes up again and again. Next time you're reading with your child, you can introduce funny voices and interesting sounds too. There you have it - a great opportunity that was used.

It's also about having fun. There is no pressure to achieve any outcomes, no ticking boxes and definitely no necessary result. Instead, see this list as a wonderful collection of ideas, opportunities and potential. It's about you and your child, exploring and experimenting together.

1: Environmental Sounds

This aspect helps your child develop their listening skills and gives them a greater awareness of sounds in the environment

• Join in your child's play and talk to them. Enrich their vocabulary and model good communication - speaking calmly, sharing thoughts and asking questions. Also encourage active listening by modelling good listening when your child is talking
• Use role play to enourage more experimental language. You can make masks of different people/animals or use props such as hats, glasses and other accessories to create interesting characters and scenarios
• Ask questions and encourage your child to use language to express their thinking. Questions such as 'What does it feel like to stamp on leaves?' 'What is your favourite... and why?'
• Explore the sounds that animals make, including imaginery animals such as dragons. Many stories feature animals. Make the sounds of the animals as you read together
• Experiment with the sounds of different objects. Tap sticks together, bang pots and pans, jump in puddles and shake rattles. Drumming on different objects is always fun!
• Encourage making large movements - painting in water outside on the pavement, swirling ribbons and playing catch can all help develop the muscles and skills needed for writing
• Encourage good listening by pausing for 30 seconds, listening to the sounds around you and reporting back what you heard. Your child can imitate the sounds they've heard to you. You can use a sandtimer to help keep the time, if focus is an issue

2: Instrumental Sounds

This aspect encourages speaking and listening through instruments. You can either buy instruments or make them at home

• You can make your own rattles using yogurt pots stuck together. Try filling them with different things - seeds, lentils, rice, peas - and hearing the different sounds they each make. Try varying the pace too - sometimes shaking them fast, sometimes slow. You can do a beat and your child copies, and then vice versa
• Make up new lyrics to old tunes. Sing along with your child and clap the rhythm as you go
• Give your child access to the instruments you have, so they can explore and experiment on their own
• Experiment with loud and quiet sounds. Using the same instrument, make your sound louder and then quieter. How quiet/loud can you go? (Caution advised with this one!)
• Tell a story and encourage your child to make sounds to accompany the story. Big bangs for a knock on the door, scratchy sounds for the wind, etc
• Use sound vocabulary to describe sounds, such as high, low, smooth, squeaky, rough, loud and fierce.

3: Body Percussion

This aspect is all about encouraging awareness of sounds and rhythms

• Both outdoors and indoors, encourage your child to explore different ways of making sounds with their body
• Keep a beat and stamp/march/splash/clap to the beat
• Listen to your child re-enact a familiar story. Encourage them to use sound effects or voices in their retelling. Use your own body to make sounds to accompany their story
• Talk with your child as they paint and comment on the shapes and movements they are making
• As your child begins to mark-make, stress simple sounds that accompany the marks they are making (if they draw an 's', say 'ssssss'
• Take it in turns to play 'Follow the Leader'. Begin with one or two movements and then increase. Add sounds to accompany the movements
• Tell a story and encourage your child to act out the movements, making sound effects. Use lots of sound words in telling the story 'The wind blew and howled, the trees swayed and creaked in the wind, the lion roared his loudest roar'

4: Rhythm and Rhyme

To experience and appreciate rhythm and rhyme in speech

In this aspect, the key is to provide rich and varied material for your child. Giving them access to books, poems, nursery rhymes and songs is essential, and encouraging them to fill in the missing words is a great way to help them identify rhythm and rhyme

• Sing nursery rhymes together, over and over again. Pause on the last word and encourage your child to complete the rhyme
• Change the speed of nursery rhymes - slower then faster
• Allow your child to invent rhymes of their own. They can use nonsense words, too
• Clap along to nursery rhymes, stamp your feet or add repeated actions alongside the sounds. Do the same action at each rhyming word
• Read poems together. Emphasise the rhyming word when reading/singing them
• Rhyming soup - get a pan and tell your child you're going to make rhyming soup.
• 'This is my tasty Rhyming Soup. In this soup, I'm going to put a fox... some socks... a box...'
• Encourage your child to participate and mime putting other rhyming things in
• Make up characters with rhyming names and tell stories together, 'Fizzy Lizzy is feeling... dizzy'
• Pick three objects or pictures, two that rhyme and one that doesn't, and invite your child to pick the odd one out
• 'I know a word that rhymes with...': Begin a sentence with the phrase 'I know a word that rhymes with... and then give a clue about the word. For example, 'I know a word that rhymes with cat, you put it on your head. The word is... hat!' As your child becomes more familiar with the rhyme, they will be able to guess the missing word themselves

5: Alliteration

This aspects helps develop your child's understanding of alliteration

• Play shopping or ordering from a cafe, and ask for alliterative food and drink, such as 'jiggly jelly', 'spicy sausages' or 'tasty toast'
• Explore books, stories and poems that feature alliteration
• Tongue twisters can be a great challenge! Perhaps you can share some with your child
• Play the Alliteration game - compete to form the longest chain of words beginning with the same sound
• Alliterative names - can you think of a description to match your name? 'Marvellous Maryam', 'Super Safa', 'Wonderful Wakeel'
• Make up the names of aliens or creatures, using nonsense words that have the same initial sound. You can use these characters to feature in storytelling or roleplaying too
• Put items in a mystery box/bag and slowly remove them, elongating the initial sound. Invite your child to guess what the object is before they can see it, e.g. 'This is a sssssss....sock!'

6: Voice Sounds

This aspect helps your child begin to identify different vocal sounds, including oral blending and segmenting

• During story time, encourage your child to use sound effects, such as 'whoosh, whoosh', 'squishy squelchy', 'splish, splash, splosh'
• Continue to use high-level vocabulary, describing textures, sounds and shapes with more complex descriptions, e.g. 'frothy, crunchy, smooth, crackly'
• During water play or bathtimes, encourage your child to replicate the sound of water, e.g. drip, bubble, swoosh, splosh
• Provide opportunities for your child to explore different mouth movements. This can include blowing bubbles/paint through a straw, blowing dandelion seeds and making different voices and sounds, such as the ticking of a clock, the mooing of a cow or the choo choo of a steam train
• Make trumpets out of cones of paper or the tubes of kitchen roll and encourage your child to make sounds through them
• Retell stories using different voices, squeaky, deep, quiet, loud, etc. Encourage your child to do the same when telling a story

7: Oral Blending and Segmenting

This aspect focuses on the skills of blending (combining sounds to make a word) and segmenting (breaking a word into its composite sounds)

• Find opportunities to say the initial sounds within a word. For example, if playing with a ball, make the sound 'b, b, b'
• Roleplay being a robot that breaks the words up into sounds. For example, the robot might ask for 'ch-ee-se... cheese!'. You could also play 'I'm thinking of' or I spy, where you break up a word into its sounds and your child has to guess what you're thinking. Encourage them to break up words too, but don't worry if they don't manage this. It's a long and gentle process!
• Place items in a bag or box, and slowly sound out the name, breaking it into its sounds. Invite your child to guess what it is before they see it. For example, 'I've got a b-r-u-sh...brush!'
• Pick out words and clap along to each sound. This can help your child identify how to break down words into their constituent parts
• If your child is showing an interest in forming letters, you can introduce several letters with their corresponding sounds. The first letters that are taught in Letters and Sounds are S-A-T-P-I-N. You can show them a letter, e.g. S, trace it with your finger, describe it 'Look how wiggly it is! It looks like a sss-snake', make the letter out of playdough or trace it in water/sand. The first introduction to letters should be very gentle, fun and child-led. Don't worry if your child shows no interest in letters at this stage. The key, as we mentioned earlier, is to have fun in a no-pressure, no-expectation setting.

Hopefully you'll find some ideas here that are workable for you and your child. Again, the aim is to have fun, explore sounds and enjoy the journey.

Check out our other article on the first two aspects of Phase 1 Phonics.

We'd love to hear from you, too! What have you tried? What worked well? What other ideas do you have? Let us know by email and we can add your suggestions to this list.

Many of these ideas were taken from the UK's Letters and Sounds guidance. You can search 'Letters and Sounds, Phase 1' for more ideas online.