Ideally I would have hidden the characters around the garden and had them hunt for them. Unfortunately the light was fading so there wasn’t time, but we still had fun. They always enjoy it when some of our favourite characters are involved in our play.
Resources
- Snow
- Bath letters
- Characters
Method
I spread some bath letters and characters out in the snow. The boys (age 5 and 3) had to match the letter to the character. As they walked around they were sounding out the initial sounds.
Before and after:
Once they had matched their characters to the letters, Finn showed me what he had found. I expected to have to help him with the ‘e’ for Evie, as he is used to it sounding like ‘eh’, but because the letter name is ‘E’ he was able to work it out.
Ioan had ‘o’ for octopus and owl so I checked his understanding of how you make the ‘ow’ sound.
DfES Outcomes for EYFS (2013)
Literacy
Reading (40 to 60+ months)
• Hears and says the initial sound in words.
• Can segment the sounds in simple words and blend them together and knows which letters represent some of them.
• Links sounds to letters, naming and sounding the letters of the alphabet.
