We hope you find this booklet useful. As you can see,
most of the activities are listening and speaking activities.
At Nursery, we do not move onto letter recognition until
your child has covered all the Phase 1 activities
The suggestions in this booklet are for you to use with
your child when you think they are ready.
Most of all it should be FUN!!
If you need any further information, please
speak to your child’s keyworker or to Kate
Tingle, Debbie Gornall or Sue Allan
At Ribblesdale Nursery School, we follow the National
Strategies Phase one Letters and Sounds and the Early
Years Foundation Stage Literacy strand
Aspect 2: General sound discrimination – instrumental
sounds
There are 7 aspects in phase 1Aspect 1: General sound discrimination – environmental
sounds
Aspect 2: General sound discrimination – instrumental
sounds
Aspect 3: General sound discrimination – body percussion
Aspect 4: Rhythm and rhyme
Aspect 5: Alliteration
Aspect 6: Voice sounds
Aspect 7: Oral blending and segmenting
To experience and develop awareness of sounds made with
instruments and noise makers
Examples of activities in nursery– matching sound makers, loud and
quiet sounds, enhancing stories with instruments, stop and start
How can I help at home?
Using any instruments you may
have or pans , bowls and a
wooden spoon– can your child
play quietly? Noisily?
Can they play and stop at an
agreed signal?
Aspect 1: General sound discrimination –
Aspect 7: Oral Blending and segmenting
environmental sounds
To develop oral blending and segmenting of sounds in words
To develop children’s listening skills and
awareness of sounds in the environment
Examples of activities in nursery
Clapping out sounds from a word, I spy– for example– “Ispy a z-ip” using a puppet/robot to sound out individual letters in a word
Identifying initial sounds in words.
Sounds of the alphabet
The English language is a little complicated! We have 26 letters in
the alphabet and 44 sounds! These can be seen on the opposite
page.
Each letter has a name “A” and a sound, “a,a,a” - so we try to
encourage the children to hear the sounds, in each word by
segmenting them, for example, “c-a-t” . Then we blending them
back together—”c-a-t” says “cat”
Examples of activities in nursery– listening walks, matching shakers with
different fillings, sound lotto, stories
How can I help at home?
Drawing attention to everyday sounds– sirens,
aeroplanes,
helicopters, baby crying,
birds signing, traffic—can your child identify
the sound?
Aspect 2: General sound discrimination – instrumental
sounds
How can I help at home?
To experience and develop awareness of sounds made with
instruments and noise makers
One of the best ways to help your child is to play games such as
“I spy with my little eye, something beginning with—-”
Examples of activities in nursery– matching sound makers, loud and
quiet sounds, enhancing stories with instruments, stop and start
Sound-talking—you could play a game with your child with objects
in the home — for example, saying:
‘I spy a p-e-g – peg.’
‘I spy a c-u-p – cup.’
‘Pick up your b-a-g.’
Keep it simple!
How can I help at home?
Using any instruments you may
have or pans , bowls and a
wooden spoon– can your child
play quietly? Noisily?
Can they play and stop at an
agreed signal?
Aspect 3: General sound discrimination –
body percussion
To talk about sounds we make with our bodies and what the
sounds mean
Aspect 5– Alliteration
To explore how different sounds are articulated, and to extend
understanding of alliteration
Examples of activities in nursery
Examples of activities in
nursery
Action songs, high low, body sounds– clapping,
clicking fingers, patting knees. Loud and quiet
Each child has a name card to
be used in group time-
How can I help at home?
Singing songs together– clapping hands, tapping
knees
Singing songs loudly– then quietly
Bertha the bus goes to the
zoo– she sees a panda. penguin, pig and parrot, odd one
Aspect 6: voice sounds
Aspect 4: Rhythm and rhyme
To explore speech sounds
To increase awareness of words that rhyme and
to develop knowledge about rhyme
Examples of activities in
nursery
Examples of activities in nursery
Talking like a robot– sound stories–growling, whispering, animal
sounds, sound lotto games
Stories that rhyme, poems, odd one out games ,
rhyming pairs, nursery rhymes
How can I help at home?
When reading a rhyming story or
nursery rhyme – point out the
rhyme—for example, “wall and
fall”, “wool and full”
Make up a rhyming string– hat,
cat, rat,
mat– see if your child can continue the
string. Make up a nonsense rhyme with your child’s name“Charlie Farley”, “Juicy Lucy”, - it doesn't have to be a real
word!
How can I help at home?
When you are reading with your child, encourage them
to make sounds to accompany the story– for examplesnoring, singing, animal sounds,.
Target sounds– for example- can your
child pant like a dog everytime you read
the dog’s name?