Jolly Phonics Magentic Letters

JOLLY PHONICS MAGNETIC LETTERS

A tub of 106 lower case letters. Consonants are in red and vowels are in blue. Tub contains 2 each of the 42 letter sounds, 4 each of the vowels a, e, i and o, 6 each of m and d. Both c and k and q and qu are included. y is included in both red and blue (as both consonant and vowel).

North East Digital Awards

The Digital Awards celebrate the achievements of businesses and organisations across the North East of England that have recognised, developed and practiced digital techniques to best effect.
This region clearly has some very innovative businesses with strong digital elements. Last year we recognised the fantastic achievements of 44 regional businesses, chosen from over 250 award entries. This year the profile of the Awards and the level of participation from the region's businesses will be even greater and more prestigious.

Education Takeaway have once again entered the awards and needs your help. Please vote for us.

Social Bookmarking

In an attempt to get our site ranked higher in Google we have gone down the line of Social Bookmarking. So follow me on my adventure of Social Bookmarking and if you have any suggestions I am more than happy to listen to them. Visit our Squidoo lens with info on Jolly Phonics. Add yourself as a fan of our Facebook page, Stumble us or Digg our site. We will be watching over the next few months to see what kind of resluts we are getting. We look forward to getting to know our customers and learning all about Social Bookmarking.

Awards Update

Well we didn't make it through to the next round of The North East Digital Awards. But we had lots of support from all our customers. So I would just like to say a big thank you to everyone that voted for us. It did help with getting our name know and we did get hits to the website, which is good news. So it just leaves me one thing to say, I'll be doing it all again next year so watch out!!

Starting School

Is your child starting school in September. Are you getting a little anxious, does the thought fill you with dread? Remember these fellings are normal and you won't be on your own. Most of the other parents at the school gate will be having the same worries. We have put together a list of things you can do to help your child settle into school as pain free as possible and also help you with the transition.

• Plan Ahead - Get organised with uniform, don't leave it till the last week in August, sizes will be getting short and the shops will be crowded with other parents doing the same thing.
• Find out the school terms for the year ahead, you don't want to find out that you have booked a holiday when your child should be starting school.
• Talk to your child about starting school. Tell them what they will be doing, making new friends, playing with exciting new toys and learning lots of new things.
• Most schools offer a transition day, make the most of this. Show your child where to hang their coat, which will be their classroom and where the toilets and playground are.
• Encourage your child to get into a good routine by setting a bedtime. The first few weeks they may be very tired.
• Get organised with everything they will need the night before they start. Lay out their clothes, encourage them to help with this.

These are only a few things you can do to help your child in the first few days of their school life. There is lots more information on the internet. We have listed a few sites for you.

1. Parentscentre - helping you to help your child
2. Raisingkids - if it's about raising kids it here
3. Directgov - public service all in one place

Enjoy your childs first years at school, it goes by so quickly.

Jolly Phonics Hand Puppets & Jolly Stories

Jolly Phonics Hand Puppets

Jolly Phonics Puppets are plush, soft, full-size, hand-puppets of the main characters in Jolly Phonics, to bring life to the teaching. Inky who teaches her friends how to read and write. Snake who is quick to learn and always hungry and Bee who finds reading very hard but keeps on trying.

Jolly Phonics Jolly Stories

Join the adventures of Inky Mouse and her friends. Follow them through seven stories as they learn the 42 letter sounds. This beautifully illustrated board book has 40 spreads, each covering one or two letter sounds. A large letter is embossed on each spread, so that formation can be felt by little fingers. Each spread has a number of words for reading and for spelling, along with the Jolly Phonics action.

North East Digiatal Awards

The North East Digital Awards celebrate high-quality innovation, media professionalism and technical excellence in the digital world. We have entered our site for this award and hope you will vote for us. Visit our entry now and please cast your vote.
http://www.northeastdigitalawards.co.uk/account/

About Key Stage

A Key Stage is a stage of the state education system in the uk setting the educational knowledge expected of students at various ages.

• Key Stage 1 Age 5-7 (Years 1 & 2)
• Key Stage 2 Age 7 - 11 (Years 3 to 6)
• Key Stage 3 Age 11 - 14 (Years 7 to 9)

The Key Stages were first defined in The Key Stages were first defined in 1988 Education Reform Act to accompany the first introduction of the National Curriculum. The precise definition of each of the main 4 Key Stages is age-related, incorporating all pupils of a particular age at the beginning of each academic year. The Key Stages were designed to fit with the most prevalent structures which had already grown up in the education system over the previous 100 years of development.to accompany the first introduction of the National Curriculum. The precise definition of each of the main 4 Key Stages is age-related, incorporating all pupils of a particular age at the beginning of each academic year. The Key Stages were designed to fit with the most prevalent structures which had already grown up in the education system over the previous 100 years of development.

The National Curriculum was introduced as a nationwide curriculum for primary and secondary state schools. The purpose of the National Curriculum was to ensure that certain basic material was covered by all pupils. In subsequent years the curriculum grew to fill the entire teaching time of most state schools.

Coming Soon Bananagrams and cubes from Zoobookoo

I have been busy visiting the Spring Fair at Birmingham looking for new and exciting items for you all. We will shorly be taking stock of Bananagrams and some great products from Zoobookoo We still have a few items left in our sale so hurry along and grab yourself a bargain.
Our first newsletter went out last week, to receive updates just register on our site and opt in to receive newsletter.

Parents urged to read to children

Children in England are not reading enough outside of schoolParents are being urged to make a New Year's resolution to spend more time reading to their children.
Schools Secretary Ed Balls is spearheading the initiative ahead of the National Year of Reading 2008, which officially starts in April.
Mr Balls said reading a child a bedtime story every night could have a huge impact on their development.
"Reading can bring fun to their lives, feed their imagination, and develop their curiosity about the world."
Too many children today are not reading for pleasure - and this is harming not just our children's reading skills, but also their imagination and general knowledge
Ed Balls, Children, Schools and Families Secretary
"As parents we need to make reading a part of everyday life for our children - whether that is reading stories to younger children or talking about books and magazines with older kids," he said.
A recent survey found the reading performance of children in England had fallen from third to 19th in the world.
The Progress in International Reading Literacy Study, published in November, highlighted significant increases in the proportion of English 10-year-olds with the "least positive" attitudes to reading and who said they very seldom read stories or novels outside school.
Mr Balls said it could make "all the difference" if parents set aside 10 minutes a day before bedtime to read with their children.

Reading tips

"Too many children today are not reading for pleasure - and this is harming not just our children's reading skills, but also their imagination and general knowledge," he said.
The National Year of Reading is being run by the National Literacy Trust, which has some ideas to encourage reading in different age groups.
These include:
For babies to 3-year-olds - make a scrapbook about your child full of pictures and words. Read the words with your child and get them to say what else should be in their story.
For three to five-year-olds - cut out pictures from catalogues or magazines of objects that all begin with the same letter, plus a few that do not. Write down the names of the objects and get your child to match the picture to the name.
For five to eight-year-olds. - find your family's top five reads. Ask everyone in your family to name their favourite reads - it could be a book, magazine, comic or newspaper. Involve grandparents, cousins etc. And see if the neighbours agree.

Source http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/7163172.stm

Jolly Phonics

In Jolly Phonics the 42 main sounds of English are taught, not just the alphabet. You can listen to the letter sounds HERE
Parental support is important to all children as they benefit from plenty of praise and encouragement whilst learning. Not all children find it easy to learn and blend sounds. Children should learn each letter by its sound, not its name. So learning 'a' is for applpe, 'b' is for ball, 'c' is for cat ranther than learning the ABC.