The boys do egg hunts, on loop, in the garden, and I love activities that our 6, 4 and 1 year old can all get involved in. This time, I added some Alphablocks for some phonics fun.

Resources

  • Plastic eggs
  • Alphablock letters
  • Spring objects

Method

I filled the eggs with some spring objects and some Alphablocks characters and ‘teams’.

I hid the closed eggs around the garden.

Ioan, Finn and Cian collected the eggs and put them inside a hoop.

They opened the eggs to see what they had inside.

Finn’s first word was ‘lamb‘. He spelt it ‘l-a-m’, so Ioan pointed out that was actually a silent ‘b’ at the end.

Ioan chose to spell ‘bunny‘. Cian (18 months) kept walking around the edge of the hoop and handing me empty eggs, but Ioan and Finn are used to having him playing alongside them as they work.

Finn had a go at spelling ‘orange‘ as ‘o-r-i-n-g’, for his chick. Then he spelt ‘chick‘ as ‘ch-i-c’ so Ioan explained that the end sound was a ‘ck’ sound.

Ioan chose the ‘flower‘ next, so I asked him if he could identify the type of flower it was and spell that too.

Ioan spelt ‘eggs‘. The picture below was our egg thief, escaping with his chocolate. Ioan took the photograph of the remaining eggs.

Finn had a go spelling ‘carrot’.

DfES Early Learning Goals (2017)

Literacy

ELG 09 – Reading:

Children read and understand simple sentences. They use phonic knowledge to decode regular words and read them aloud accurately. They also read some common irregular words. They demonstrate understanding when talking with others about what they have read.

ELG 10 – Writing:

Children use their phonic knowledge to write words in ways which match their spoken sounds.