When I was a child I adored Miss Piggy from The Muppets. Thirty years later and The Boy is just as enthusiastic about one of her relatives; Peppa Pig. He absolutely adores the antics of Peppa, George and everyone else in the family, and having visited Peppa Pig World twice last year, it served to feed his obsession.
He has another interest lately, letters. He's really fascinated by the alphabet and the letters all around him. This voyage of discovery of (numbers as well as) letters is amazing to see in action, he's spotting letters and numbers all around him: on traffic lights, street signs, posters, you name it, he sees them. He knows the letters in his name, can arrange them and write his own name.
Recently, I was asked if I The Boy would like to try the Inspiration Works Peppa Pig Fun Phonics, I jumped at the chance; it would fit the bill for two of his current obsessions!
As you can see from the picture, there are 26 letter keys and an alphabet, repeat and music button. The alphabet lights up the letters in turn and recites the 'phonics', the music button plays a tune. Of these three buttons the repeat button is the most useful. At the top of the console there is a pointer to change the activity being played to one of eight options:
- letters names and sounds (makes the sound associated with the picture for each button)
- phonics (says the letter sound)
- picture identification ("find the umbrella")
- initial letters ("find the first letter of the word …")
- phonics finder ("find the letter that says 'f' as in fish")
- spelling (press the buttons for the letters in identified word)
- follow-me (buttons light up and must be pressed in certain time limit)
- sounds (the sounds of the object associated with each letter)
I like this console, there's a lot of fun, educational activities in it and The Boy is having great fun looking for the letters. He's obviously quite young to be able to identify all letters of the alphabet but he's enjoying finding the letters of his own name, and finding 'm' and 'd' for mummy and daddy. He really likes the picture identification, sounds and the letter names functions. He keeps trying to have a go on the follow-me function but it's quite fast for his young reflexes at the moment. Having the pictures next to the letters makes some of the harder levels a lot easier for pre-schoolers to use.
And so to the one negative for me: the phonics. This is where, as a primary school teacher who has co-ordinated the teaching of Literacy previously, I have a problem.
My concern about this is that it doesn't actually use the correct phonics. Letter sounds nowadays are pronounced differently as to when I was a child, there is a bigger focus on the actual sound of the letters as taken as a snapshot of them in the context of a word. Anyone with a child in Reception or above knows what I'm talking about.
For example, we're used to the letter sounds: ah, buh, cuh, duh, eh, fuh, guh, etc. but that's not right, they aren't the correct phonics. Imagine the short 'b' sound as a ball bouncing quickly. Likewise it's not 'fuh' but 'ffff' as in 'fizz'. That 'uh' sound on letters is called a 'schwa', and quite frankly saying any letter with it is not going to help your child in the future when they learn to blend sounds to read.
And this, for me, is where this otherwise brilliant resource lets itself down. I'll continue to use it with The Boy but I'll be focusing on the picture identification, initial letters and follow-me games, as I desperately try and get him to pronounce the phonics correctly in preparation for school in a year or so.
Peppa Pig Fun Phonics is made by Inspiration Works and available from Amazon
I was sent this product for the purpose of this review, my opinion is honest and unbiased.
I have the older version of this and at the time I didn't know any different and let my oldest play away and learn the sounds of the letters which is fine. But like mentioned and with him now being in Primary 1, the sounds are very different to the phonetic sounds they learn. I don't think there is a toy which teaches the sounds the way they learn them now. It is a shame as this toy is really good and has a wide range of things to do on it. Great review. x
Thank you for your detailed comment lovely. As parents we do our best to help them and then we find out it's 'wrong'! Actually the LeapFrog LeapTop (which is a first computer not the tablet) has almost exactly correct phonics. One of my work friends is the English co-ordinator and insistant on the correct phonics, she's seen this LeapFrog game and said she'd be recommending it. They do a scribble and write console which I imagine would have the correct phonics on too.
We have pretty much all the leapfrog toys, the laptop is great and the little one has the scribble and write. The tag has the wrong phonics but the pad is good too. xx
I reviews this and I saw comments on Amazon that said that the phonic were not correct from a school learning pint of view.
If truth be told I am probbaly teaching my two the incorrect phonics , as I have no idea really and have said ah, buh, duh, duh etc so u have learnt something new here.
Is there something on you tube with the sounds as they should be? maybe you should vlog the correct a-z phonics?? X
Bloody iPad spell check!! So sorry those words were correct when I wrote them!! Eg. Pint, shold be pint, U should be I and reviews should be reviewed!! Grrrr !
This is a pretty good video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=saF3-f0XWAY
The only issue is that it's American and so he says 'zee' not 'zed'. Also 'y' is not 'yu' it's more like 'yee' as in 'ye olde shoppe'
I'm so glad you linked me to this. As I have nephews and cousins who are only a few years older than Sausage, I was aware of the phonics system of teaching and have actually had several conversations with my husband about wanting to learn phonics for myself. I genuinely think Sausage is ready for more in depth learning but don't want to teach her in a way that will confuse her when she starts school.
I totally respect what you're saying about having a degree in education, but if there were any books or resources that you could recommend for me to read to give me even a basic understanding, I'd love to learn more.
This Alphablocks episode is the best video I've seen so far http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UU4FKj0OmWs and this one is also good but is American so they say zee not zed http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=saF3-f0XWAY
These are also good resources http://www.sparklebox.co.uk/literacy/letters-and-sounds/#.T3oKstXZWSo or this http://www.twinkl.co.uk/resources/literacy/letters-and-sounds
You might also find this useful with regards to her education until the age of 5 http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/20110809091832/teachingandlearningresources.org.uk/collection/32458
Great to see an honest review (found it from Michelle's Britmums post).
The Boy is wearing the lovely Children In Need PJs – they are super! as you know Aaron has them too 🙂
xxx
Ah, thanks for this. Bud will, I'm sure, be able to get a similar use from it that The Boy did. I'm glad of that. He will be around the same age as The Boy was when he reviewed it I think. I find the whole world of phonics a bit of a mystery so I will be looking at a few of the links that you've put in your replies to comments as I'd like to understand it more before Bud starts school.
I think it's a really important area to get right now to help them with their reading in the future.