Taking A Few Lessons from Local Day Care Centers

I researched the local daycares, noting the marketing emphasis on "getting your children ahead of the rest" by the time they approach Pre-K or Kindergarten. Sounds good to me as my grand kids were definitely going to be at the bottom of the pack at this stage.

A common theme is playful "fun learning" which can be summarized as developing early numeric and reading skills through creative arts, music and drama.

My hard luck story impressed the staff at several centers. They were willing to advise and in discussion ‘phonics’ was frequently mentioned as the latest early reading technique. (Surprising! Isn’t that how we learnt to read in the "good old days!"?

Search Engines to the Rescue

I searched the term "Phonics" and found all sorts of products, most of which claimed fun but didn’t seem much fun for either the kids or me (and I have to do it with them!).

Searching ‘Fun Phonics Alphabet Songs’ came up on all the major engines with Jazzles ‘Alphabet Clever Songs’ - alliterative, alphabet songs supported by all sorts of creative art activities I could print off from my computer to reinforce the learning.

And the cost was less than one day at a daycare center!

Phonics Fast at Grandpa’s Day Care!

Jazzles recommends children learning one letter a week. Makes sense to me. Some products say you can teach 4 letters and their sounds a week. I don’t believe it!

Anyway, Jazzles has enough ideas and activities to last 2 weeks on each letter. And I get a suggested order of learning letters - so the kids can sound out words earlier and easier. (Some daycares surprised me by allowing the children to choose what, if any, letter they want to work with. I can't believe this works effectively!)

Phonics Without Knowing Anything about Phonics!

Each Jazzles song focuses on the sound of one letter using song lyrics packed full of words using the same letter (alliteration!). This helps the kids connect the letter to its sound. That’s phonics! Sounds simple! It is!

For Grandparents everywhere, Jazzles gives you its ‘SuperPlans’ - a 6 page guide for each alphabet letter. It shows me step-by-step how to build a phonics theme into practically everything the kids and I like doing – including cooking, playing in the garden, excursions, dressing up, dancing and drama, playing ‘I Spy’ in the car and at home, coloring, cutting, collecting – and the list goes on!!

Scarlet loves collage! Here is her letter E using crushed eggshells glued on to the letter E for an Egg as BIG as an Elephant!

And then while the kids are doing a particular letter’s creative craft, the Jazzles songs play as background music. Everyone is happy, focused and quiet – even the dog is enjoying it all!

Printing Alphabet Activities Pages

Jazzles resources are in the form of Adobe PDF files (or e-books) that are very simple to use. I follow the ‘SuperPlans’, select the activity page and print it off on my desk top printer. It is just black and white printing - - you don't need a color printer! Coloring is what the grandkids do - a bonanza of coloring activity but not for coloring sake. Each coloring activity is fine tuned for reinforcing sound-letter knowledge and promoting discussion.

Reprinting As Often As You Like

If your grandkids are anything like mine, they are quite happy to repeat the same activity page over and over – which is why home printing is such a good idea. Why buy one-shot books when you can print and then reprint what you need! The kids even ask that I reprint one or two pages each for them to do at home. They're always finding a new favorite page which is good because repetition is very important at this age - so this all makes sense. Well put together Lesley Beth!

Each resource page has a strategic purpose. I discovered that coloring pages are designed to help the inexperienced carer like me explain the lyrics of each song(comprehension!).

Each collage page, which the kids just love, is designed for children to have tactile experiences of materials starting with a particular letter. They love collaging the letter 'd' with dirt and 'c' with coffee and 'g' with grass clippings!!

The Jazzles "Cut and Paste" activities are graduated in difficulty to help progressively develop their ability to copy and draw letter shapes, or draw lines to connect dots and objects.
According to my Jazzles guide, by cutting the activity shapes and handling and gluing the small pieces of paper, children develop their finger and pencil control while reinforcing their visual knowledge of letters and their use in words and contexts. Also it helps them handle buttons and zips - sounds good to me!

Is this the world's Most Popular Collaged Letter? According to Lesley Beth, her letter M collaged with melon seeds, appears on hundreds of teenage blog sites around the world. Why? She doesn't know but it looks nice, doesn't it!

Six Months of Activities Costs Less than One Day at Day Care!

Before I ordered Jazzles, I read many of its teacher and parent reviews. Basically they said kids love Jazzles and teachers love Jazzles because the songs are upbeat, amusing and everything is so well put together. My own experience reinforces that.

There's even ideas for excursions to reinforce the target letter - for example if the letter of the week is 'F', buy five gallons of gas on the way to visiting a seafood or fresh fish market, where you can explain the different types of fish (all labeled - so you're looking knowledgeable anyway), buy four fish to fry for five dollars - and you can see how you are extending the knowledge of F into numerics, shopping and cooking! And that is what Jazzles is all about.

Lesley Beth told me she developed this idea that working with a letter a week creates lots of ways phonics knowledge can be extended into everyday activities. For each letter she appears to have developed over 100 ways of doing so. Five gallons of gas won't go far but just another idea of how to fire up the letter F on the way the fish market!

It is hard for a grandparent to create a day’s ‘play and learning’ program – let alone a month or six months. With Jazzles, you don’t need to do that – it is all there for you to use and tailor to the developmental ages of your grandchildren.

Summing Up.

The kids started their new schools 2005 – kindergarten and G1. At first, they both needed some additional tuition to catch up to the rest of their class, but they were so far behind they would have failed if we had not used Jazzles.

Now Jack (6) is independently reading – he loves dinosaur and insect books and I partly attribute this to the Jazzles Tyrannosaurus Rex song which started his fascination for extinct animals.

Scarlet is also well on the way to reading independence. Although almost the youngest in the class, she is very confident and a real little actress – which again I think Jazzles helped develop through its emphasis on suggested actions and dramas for each song.

Now days, I pick them up and listen to their stories. I love it when they receive a sticker and I enjoy going round the class to see their work on the walls, or going to assembly to hear their name mentioned for some weekly achievement, or just watching them take part.

I help them with their homework and get a real kick to see their reading and writing progress.

Scarlet is sounding out her words really well – a direct result I know of all the fun ‘work’ we did with Jazzles. Both are top of their classes in maths but I can’t claim much for that!

But I am really proud of them and happy to have given them the time that I denied their own mother at the same age!