This was entirely Cian’s idea and combined two of his current favourite things, his life long love of animals and his new interest in sounding out words. He wanted to use the moulds to make play dough animal shapes and then write the names of the animals.

Whale

w-a-l

First he used the chocolate mould to make a whale. He sounded out w-a-l and found the letters to represent them.

Sea turtle

He split this in to ‘sea’ and ‘turtle’.

s-ee

t-r-t-l

Flamingo

fl-mi-go

Snake

s-n-a-ck

Lion

l-i-n

Bear

b-e-r

All the animals

These now included q-a-b (crab), p-e-g-w-i-n (penguin), r-i-n-o (rhino) and g-r-i-l-u (gorilla).

Proudly showing me his finished words and an observation he had made about, ‘sea turtle’.

DfES Early Learning Goals (2017)

Literacy

ELG 10 – Writing:

Children use their phonic knowledge to write words in ways which match their spoken sounds. They also write some irregular common words. They write simple sentences which can be read by themselves and others. Some words are spelt correctly and others are phonetically plausible.