Using the PI Early Years Starter pack with a 4yr.old.

Debbie takes programme users on a guided tour of the Units and resources and discusses possible applications in all settings.
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Susan
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Joined: Sun Oct 28, 2007 5:22 pm
Location: Exeter
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Using the PI Early Years Starter pack with a 4yr.old.

Post by Susan »

I've started to use the Early Years programme with my grandson, age 4. He'll begin 'big school' in January so we need to work fast. I'd like him to be school-proofed as much as possible before he starts!

It's been arranged that he comes along with his mum, but minus his baby sister, every Sunday morning for his 'lesson'. She'll do the back-up work at home with him during the week.

Before starting, we purchase a colour printer. We had a black/white one but I couldn't bear to produce the lovely worksheets in B/W. We did consider putting the contents on a disc and taking it to a printer to print out in colour but it seemed an awful lot of hassle, and probably nearly as expensive in the long run. In case you're interested, the one we bought -recommended as v. cheap but perfectly OK printing, by my eldest son -was a Canon MP210 from Amazon.

I also got a file to hold the worksheets and an exercise book to stick in the individual grapheme tiles along with a wordbank sheet. We already had a Jolly Phonics magnetic letters set.

Last week he had his first lesson -we did the first 6 sounds, which seems a lot, but I'd already done some work with him in the past and he knew all of them, so it was only revision. He read all the words on the 1st three wordbank sheets confidently. I asked his mum to put up the A5 posters as a frieze in his bedroom.

This week, when he arrived, he proudly showed me the worksheets from last week that he had finished for homework. He had coloured in the pictures, attempted a drawing and had been practising his words.

We tackled c/k/ck and e, with no real problems. ck was a new GPC and the first time he had encountered 2 letters = a sound, but it didn't seem to worry him. He is a v. lively, wriggly boy so keeping him concentrating could be tricky, but, so far, the worksheets and activities have held his interest.

He's very good at holding his pencil correctly as, from the very first occasion that he held a pencil, I've used Debbie's mantra 'froggy legs and sit it on the log'.

I'll try to keep posting about how we're progressing :D
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debbie
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Joined: Mon Oct 08, 2007 2:28 pm
Location: UK

Post by debbie »

Thank you very much for your comments, Susan. We all look forward to hearing how your grandson progresses over the next few months.

If other Early Years Starter Pacakge users would care to contribute their experiences also, they would be very welcome. :wink:
Debbie Hepplewhite
Susan
Posts: 25
Joined: Sun Oct 28, 2007 5:22 pm
Location: Exeter
Contact:

Post by Susan »

Just a brief update on tutoring my grandson:

My SIL has taken on the task of teaching my grandson R as I have some work I need to do on Sunday mornings.

SIL collects the next few sheets of the PI-EY programme from me -and then does it all at home with R -a little every day. Today, when they came round, we played one of R's favourite games -it involves two soft toys and a set of Jolly Phonics letter cards. The toys take turns (I'm 'puppy' whilst R is 'kitten') to sound-out and blend words. Puppy is terribly slow and forgetful and always needs lots of help from kitten :wink:

R's blending skills have come on leaps and bounds since he started doing PI-EY regularly and he now knows all the unit 1 and 2 sounds. He easily sounded out and blended several 4 sound words including some with /ch/ /sh/ and /ck/. His dad says he is making great strides with writing the letters too :D
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debbie
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Joined: Mon Oct 08, 2007 2:28 pm
Location: UK

Post by debbie »

Excellent news, Susan. Thanks for the update! :D
Debbie Hepplewhite
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