Kids typically learn long vowels in first grade. Long vowels are common vowel patterns and it’s important to teach each one explicitly. Often, long vowel sounds are pronounced as the name of the letter itself. For example, the long a sound is /ai/ as in sail and it makes the same sound as the letter […]
List of Phonics Sounds
There are 44 phonemes in English. A phoneme is the smallest unit of sound. “Shop” for example contains 3 phonemes: sh-o-p. If you are new to the subject of phonics, you can pretty much substitute the word “sound” for “phoneme” and still get the gist of this blog. In the following content, I will provide […]
What is Phonics?
Phonics is a method of teaching reading that focuses on sound/symbol correlations. Phonics advocates acknowledge that learning to read is not an “innate” skill that children acquire spontaneously. Instead, kids benefit tremendously from learning the code a bit at a time. Phonics instruction begins with a lesson that explicitly teaches the student a sound like […]
Homeschool Resources for Elementary Reading and Math
Homeschooling can provide parents with flexibility and the ability to curate the curriculum to meet their child’s needs. The most essential academic subjects are reading and math, because we need literacy and numeracy skills for almost every job and we use them in our daily lives. In this post, I’ll provide some recommendations for homeschool […]
Holiday Long Vowel Worksheets
In our last post, there was an error in our holiday tree. The error has been corrected and in this post, Reading Elephant is offering a silent e, ee/ea and ai/ay worksheet. Holiday Silent e Tree Silent e Pdf ee/ea Holiday Tree with Interleaving This holiday tree allows kids to review short vowels and silent […]