Kids will have a jolly good time learning to read with Jolly Phonics! In this well-constructed program, learn with the help of Inky Mouse and her friends, the lovable Snake and Bee. Teaching is straight-forward, but fun. Stories of the three friends provide the context for all the instructional information. Children learn via visual, auditory, and tactile-kinesthetic modes (for instance, hand movements for each letter sound as well as sky writing and finger-tracing letters). Letter sounds are introduced along with a set of movements that serve as mnemonic devices. Skills are taught in tandem throughout the program and at three age levels, each level reviewing and expanding on previous content. Each covers the same seven groupings of the 42 letter sounds (non-alphabetical). These groupings and progression allow immediate decoding of many words.
Jolly Phonics materials target different ages, but the actual instructional content is ordered the same for each group utilizing seven letter sound groupings. The spiral nature of the components provides interesting options. You can begin at any of the age levels: the Stories Board Book plus Activities Books (ages 3+), Finger Phonics plus Workbooks and Level 0 Readers (ages 4+), and Student Books plus Decodable Readers (ages 5+). Instruction builds within a level but the next level also reviews all concepts and expands so you won’t miss any content.
Jolly Phonics at Home incorporates games, songs, activities, colorful reading material, and an entertaining video to introduce the 42 letter sounds and launches your student on the path of phonics-based reading.
Jolly Phonics K4 combines revised board book readers (with new illustrations and information panels for parents), phonics workbooks, and decodable readers to move from single sounds to blended letter sounds.
In Jolly Phonics K, the core instruction is found in the newly revised Teacher & Student Books, all aligned with the Science of Reading. The revised edition has two semester-long Student Books instead of three but includes the same content from the previous three books. Each book features all 42 letter sounds and is used for reinforcement and further skills development. Skills include learning letter sounds, formation, blending, identifying the sounds in words, and tricky (irregular) words. The books build on each other, introducing more tricky words as well as sound spellings, spelling patterns, and even basic sentence structure. The revised Teacher Book provides reduced copies of the Student Book pages with updated lesson plans, additional help for struggling readers, and a student checklist. Decodable Readers allow students to practice what they are learning. Additional nonfiction (Our World) and fiction (Folktale) readers for Levels 1-4 are available on our website.
In summary, Jolly Phonics is an excellent program whether beginning with a PK or K student. All program components are high quality, well-designed, and easy to use; most are brightly colored. In a relatively short time, children will be reading and writing. It goes much deeper than most beginning phonics programs, though stops a little short of a complete K-2 program. Used successfully with students as young as three, the methods and results achieved are impressive. Follow up with Jolly Literacy for complete language arts including spelling, grammar, writing, and reading comprehension.