26 Letters, 44 Speech Sounds, & 70 Common Spellings for those Sounds
Guest Blog by Margo Smith
Phonics is the system of relationships between letters and sounds in a language and will help your child learn to read and spell. Think of the written language as a code. If your child knows the sounds of letters and letter combinations, this will help your child decode words as s/he reads. This will also help your child know which letters to use as s/he writes words. Did you know that the 26 letters of the alphabet give us 44 English speech sounds and about 70 common spellings for these speech sounds? Our little ones have a lot to learn!
Start exposing your child to phonics at an early age. Zoodles is a free educational resource with hundreds of fun Early Reading/Phonics Games and Decoding/Word Recognition Games for children ages 2 to 8. Our unique child interface adapts to each child’s age and cognitive abilities, so Zoodles will grow right along with your child. For additional resources on Phonics Techniques, please review the below list of free blogs provided by Guest Blogger, Margo Smith.
Your Friends at Zoodles
- Phonics resources help parents and teachers assist children to learn and love to read by the use of phonics. Make the most of all the beneficial data on this site to find the best books to read to your child to promote a love of learning and start them on the road to a lifelong love of reading. This site offers free teacher and parent resources. You can also be inspired by the real life success stories found here to help you be motivated as you help your child learn to love books.
- Phonics and Teaching Decoding Skills focusing on the age range of kindergartners through third graders, this blog advocates that students in this age range who are taught explicit phonetic strategies for decoding and encoding words have a stronger basis for later literacy learning. They strongly feel that during these years children benefit the most from having precise phonetic strategies modeled for them. Such a strategy helps children to decipher word meaning and provides them with a secure basis for later literacy as they grow older and gain more reading skills.
- How to Help Your Struggling Reader is a very suitable site that points you to an article on how to intervene if your child is having difficulty reading, with realistic tips of parents of children who struggle with reading.
- Home School Blogger is a teaching blog that gives you a review of different phonics teaching methods available so that you can make a more educated decision when choosing a phonics program. Be sure to take a look over all the pertinent information you’ll find on this blog when deciding which program will best suit your needs.
- Phonics Reading provides help for anyone taking on the challenge of learning English as their second language. This style is an exemplary phonics based classification for demonstrating the English language. It has been in use for more than 30 years in the U.K. This procedure was implemented to help teachers explain the nuances of written English, well known for its rules and their exceptions, in a child-centered manner.
- Teaching Phonics targets the particular needs of parents choosing to home school their children. Specific advice is provided for all homeschoolers.
- Learning to Read with Phonics examines the usefulness of phonics when learning to read. This site offers other articles on this topic. Be sure your children and loved ones have all the help they need in the area of reading.
- Building Blocks of Reading stresses phonemic awareness, known to be at the root of spoken English, this site will definitely assist you as you work to help your child recognize words. Find answers to any phonics question you may have.
- Phonics Kids provides you with helpful overviews of the usefulness of phonics. Get to know about various downloadable programs for your use.
- English Pronunciation Site offers videos detailing examples of English words and phrases. You can chose to maintain your skills by following the blog or subscribe for apps free of charge to keep up the pace with these valuable complete video segments. Be certain your English passes with flying colors by making use of this helpful site.
Author Byline
Margo Smith graduated with a B.S. degree from BYU. She enjoys writing about a wide array of topics from Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD) to online classes to reading and phonics. She draws from her own education, her years in school and an author’s view on life when compiling articles.
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communicate with you but you have no idea what it is they want? Chances are that they’re equally upset…you can tell because it usually leads to wailing. Many people have made the claim that babies can communicate prior to formulating words, through the pitch or duration of their cries or in the way they move their bodies. But until recently, nobody realized that you could teach them a better way to communicate before they ever say “mama”.
and 
signs are easy to learn and teach and they can be modified for your child’s skill level (as long as you understand them, that’s all that matters). You may be surprised by many of the things they can learn to say (such as 
hoofed animals, you have a source of manure. If not, kitchen scraps that are not from meat or fat can be used. Layers of weeds and manure or scraps can be made, or laid on an existing compost pile. The child can have a small one that he or she can turn and monitor until it becomes rich compost. This compost can then be returned to the garden so the cycle can start again.
Move on to how those elements get into soil, and how soil is formed. A hands on lesson can involve the gathering of the soil needed for the test. Shovel a little dirt from five or six sites and allow the child to mix it with his or her hands. Then let them pack the soil into the sample bag.
pounds of element per 1,000 square feet. Fertilizer usually comes in 40 pound sacks that only have a percentage of the element in them, with the rest being carrier. You can cover fractions and multiplication while figuring out how much of the bag to spread to meet the recommendations. You can go to the Tulsa Master Gardeners 
Stephanie Suesan Smith, Ph.D. is a master gardener, photographer, and writer in Texas. You can see her photographs and read her work at 
Did you know that March was National Nutrition Month? Thanks to 
This year’s fair included 210 entries, pooled from the winning projects at twenty-nine schools across San Francisco. Around 30 volunteer judges with career experience in science and technical fields break into teams of three to four people to judge entries across three grade levels (6th, 7th, and 8th) as well as three categories (Biological Sciences, Behavioral and Health Sciences, and Physical Sciences). I was the team lead judging 7th grade Physical Sciences, which included 22 entries.
Every year, I’m impressed by the thought and creativity that go into the projects, and this year was no exception. Some of the more notable entries I encountered include:
Singing Wine Glasses – The student investigated how liquids alter the sound produced when you run a finger over the rim of a wine glass. The student experimented with not only the amount of liquid, but the viscosity, including such odd ingredients as almond butter!
Our team rated each project in three areas:
A science fair project is a perfect way you and your child can have a rewarding, enriching experience together, and maybe produce one of tomorrow’s generation of scientists and engineers.
In one video, figure skater Rachel Flatt practices her routines in front of a phantom camera that captures her motion at rates of up to 1500 frames per second. Sports science professor Deborah King then breaks down each of Rachel’s moves – from her quadruple toe loops to her basic spins – explaining concepts like angular momentum, vertical velocity, and other laws of motion. Deborah even uses the spinning chair in her office to demonstrate the concepts herself!
The dynamic videos, which you can watch at 
