You know Jolly Phonics is doing its thing when your toddler places a slice of salmon on the dining table, moves it in circles and makes the hissing sound: ssssssssssss. He’s making the letter sound for ‘S’!

Though I’m afraid he hasn’t met the success criteria of naming this creature in all 3 languages. Snake, he knows fine, but he keeps confusing ヘビ for the Chinese name (which should be 蛇).

In any case, it seems that he remembers one letter sound. Time to move on to the next. This is where things get interesting. In Jolly Phonics, ’a’ follows after ‘s’ whereas in Montessori Phonics, ‘s’ is paired with ‘y’. What were their pedagogical considerations for choosing these combinations as such? Does anyone out there know?

I guess I ought to be kiasu (Singaporean trait for ‘afraid to lose’) and teach him both ‘a’ and ‘y’. Then maybe he can blend all three sounds to form s-a-y (‘say’)! LOL

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I wrote the following before I went to bed. Then I shrewdly realised that ‘at’ sounds just like the letter ‘A’, so technically I didn’t have to teach my boy how to blend ‘a’ and ‘y’.

With that epiphany in mind, I started making various letter sounds. Stuff like ‘s’ + ‘ay’ = ‘say’ and ‘h’ + ‘ay’ = ‘hay’. I kept uttering letter sounds - and my boy obligingly complied in the air-conditioned comfort of the night before he drifted off into slumberland. So here’s a time hack for young parents: teach your child phonics during his or her bedtime! 

Will update you guys with more phonics teaching adventures!