When my little girl came home with a colouring-in of an ‘A’ dressed like an Apple and started jabbering about Annie Apple, Bouncing Ben and Clever Cat, I was intrigued. This looked like a well thought out way of helping children to remember the alphabet both audibly and visually. So I did what any modern Mom might do – I looked up Annie Apple and I uncovered the wonderful world of Letterland.
Letterland, originally developed by Lyn Wendon, is a phonics based approach to teaching reading, writing and spelling for to 3-8 year olds. Children are taught shapes and sounds of letters by giving them imaginary names and shapes and presenting them as living things in the fictional land of Letterland. Letterland characters transform plain black letter shapes into pictogram characters. By translating the full range of dry phonic facts into engaging stories, children are motivated to listen, to think and to learn. These stories explain letter shapes and sounds, allowing children to progress quickly to word building, reading and writing.
Children find Letterland to be exciting and colourful and it is used extensively at pre-primary level in South Africa. It has also been used to help teach young children English in foreign language countries like Russia. The pictogram characters of Letterland provide teachers with opportunities to use English in an engaging, conversational manner when teaching children and this leads to an expansion in vocabulary and grammar.
Mom’s can order a range of Letterland books at www.imagikids.co.za and use them creatively at home to reinforce what their children are learning in the classroom as they take their first steps towards learning to read.
Happy Learning to Read :)
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