Cian (4 this week) is really fascinated by the spelling of our names. He loves getting his magnetic board out to spell them. Here, he’d called me over to show what he had done.
He’s learnt the spellings of these names, as the mixture of three Welsh and three Irish names makes sometimes makes phonetic spelling tricky. Especially when you compare how you say Sian (Welsh) and Cian (Irish) completely differently, despite similar spellings.
The fact that our names (Liam, Sian, Ioan, Finn and Cian) are all made up of so many letter i‘s, a‘s and n‘s makes doing activities like this tricky. But when he found Daddy was using the lower case ‘l‘ he needed for Pilli’s name, he decided to swap it over.
As always, this was child led, so I let him explore the sounds independently, rather than correcting the use of numbers in names or one of the ‘l’s missing in Pilli.
Cian proudly showing off his spellings:
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.
