Letters and Sounds

One September when our previous pre-school had left for school we had a predominately old pre-school cohort (September – December Birthdays) who questioned why some of their friends had left for big school. This started a school topic with us exploring what happens at school. We spoke about the different lessons you do at school and Tilly asked “can we do letter lessons?” We didn’t see why not and planned a simple phonic lesson. Each time Tilly was at nursery she would ask again to do lessons and these grew in popularity.

Before long our ‘letters and sounds’ lessons were part of our curriculum and now run three times a week every Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday morning. These lessons are based on the DfE publication ‘letters and sounds’ and are planned for according to age and ability. They are based on fun with the overall aim of imbedding a love for literacy at an early age.

We are very innovative with our planning and activities range from making marks in shaving foam to letter hunts to rhyming words to digging for letter treasure in our sand pit.

We are very pleased each year that the primary school teachers and governors tell us how well prepared our children are and that they are ahead when they start school. But our upmost pride comes from how engaged our children are in letters and sounds and that they ask for letters and sounds and tell us how much they love it!