Jolly Phonics: Letter sound /p/

Letter sound /p/ is the second last sound in Group 1 of Jolly Phonics. To recap, the letter sounds in Group 1 are s, a, t, i, p, n.

Story

I usually include the story from the Jolly Phonics Teacher’s Book. However, I decided to include the one I shared with Xxm from Jolly Stories. This story is easier to relate to the picture in the Jolly Finger Phonics.

Inside the house, Jess was having her birthday party. Bee, Inky and Snake peered around the pile of presents in the corner. The children were just singing happy birthday. Then Jess took a big breath and – p, p, p, puff – she blew out the candles on her pink pig cake. “This is a good party!” muttered Snake, a little while later, from behind a big pile of popcorn. “You like anything where there is plenty of food,” laughed Bee. Snake nodded, happily.

Bee, Inky and Snake are the three main characters in Jolly Phonics. Inky the mouse is on a quest to take pictures for a letter sound book she is compiling. Along the way, she met Bee who lost her way home because she can’t read and Snake who decided to join in the adventure.

Action

Hold up a finger, as if it is a candle, and pretend to puff it out, saying p, p, p, p.

We had lots of fun executing this action. It went from a simple p, p, p to a full blown “with a huff and a puff, I’ll blow you down” game between myself and the two boys. It was silly but extremely enjoyable.

Formation

Xxm practiced writing first on his finger phonics book, then his activity book. He needed gentle reminders on the correct strokes. I realized he was drawing a line and a circle to form the letter p instead.

Jolly Songs

Tune: Wheels on the Bus.

Puff out the candles
on the pink pig cake.
/p/-/p/-/p/
p/-/p/-/p/
Puff out the candles
on the pink pig cake.
Puff, puff, puff.

Blending

Blend the words pit, pat, tap, tip.

Watching the YouTube videos on blending certainly accelerated his understanding of blending. Xxm is able to break down the word into its individual sounds and sound it out together with me. Then I blend the sounds for him to hear it and read the words.

To encourage phonemic awareness, I am gradually introducing more rhymes and alliteration in our interactions. I have since introduced a poem to him and just today, I bought a copy of Hop on Pop by Dr Seuss which really is a tongue twister for me. He sat through the entire story with me. I can’t tell if he enjoyed it because he didn’t like Dr Seuss before but at least, he didn’t make me stop midway. I intend to introduce the concept of rhyming words to him and perhaps play a game or two to strengthen his understanding.

Word Bank

This is the first time that I am writing this. With the letter sounds we have learnt, these are the words we can practice sounding out with our children.

pit, pat, tip, tap, sap, sip, pip.

Activities

One of the craft idea suggested in the teacher’s book is to collage a parrot picture with feathers. I think this is a really cool idea but I didn’t know where to get feathers so I ..forego this activity with Xxm.

Both Xxm and Xmm worked on their Usborne abc sticker book. They learnt that p is for present, penguin, painting, parrot and pizza.

This picture was taken when Xmm just awoke from his slumber, hence the dazed look. Lol.

They did another similar activity in their Jolly activity books. They simply cannot get enough of stickers. The other exercises required Xxm to locate pictures beginning with the stipulated letter sounds. I am heartened to say that Xxm has no problems identifying the beginning sounds in words.

Our craft was to stick the parts that made up a panda’s face. I got this activity from the Kumon First Steps Workbook – Let’s Sticker and Paste.

This concludes our learning for /p/. Do check out here for other letter sounds we have done previously.