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If you have a primary school child you will most likely have heard of phonics. Phonics to those of you that may not know, is a way of teaching children to read. It's definitely a different way of learning from when I was Blake's age. In fact I find the whole thing really confusing. Instead of learning by sight and looking at the shape and word as a whole, phonics encourages children to break down the individual sounds in a word. This is in order to decode them and work out what they are.
If you are currently having to homeschool or even if you aren't, you may want to help encourage your child/ren to practice phonics. After all reading is such an important skill to have. Time for Phonics is an online educational games website that helps to encourage children to practise phonics in a fun way.
Parents can currently sign up for a 30 day free trial. After this if you want to continue the subscription it is £10 a year.
Blake really likes learning phonics at school and I like to encourage him to do a bit of learning at home too. We had a look at the website and Blake had lots of fun using my phone to access the games. I'm glad to see that the games could be played via the website on my phone rather than needing a laptop.
There are currently 3 varieties of games available on the Time for Phonics site. All 3 games are available in each of the phonics phases 2-5.
The 3 games are:
- Desert Island
- Space Farm
- Space Football
Each of the 3 games has the same concept where you focus on decoding the words to decide if they are a real or silly word. Blake really liked the concept and his favourite game was the Space Football one.
I like the whole idea of finding real/silly words to give to the correct characters and it makes the idea of phonics fun. I love that the illustrations are bright and colourful which helps to keep children engaged.
Time for Phonics is a sister site of MrsMactivity.co.uk and has been created by qualified teachers and designers who are experts in providing excellent learning opportunities for children.