About a month ago I introduced Jolly Phonics to Ethan, and he is still enjoying listening to the CD and singing the songs.  He hasn't shown much interest in letter tracing, whenever I get the books out he chooses to do something else, so I am absolutely not pressuring him.  He loves playing with play dough and other fine motor activities, as well as large letter writing in unique ways (like with cars) and mark making in general, so I'm not concerned or in any rush.  

We have been learning phonics sounds in our day to day activities, talking about the sounds that we hear in different words and playing games like 'I spy' in the car.  We also made these letters and phonics sounds boxes.  


The boxes are the Glis boxes from Ikea which I love and use for absolutely everything!  I put a sticker of the letter on the front (we only had upper case letter stickers, I'm still looking for lower case ones to go alongside them) and I stuck on the Jolly Phonics letter and picture on the side for reference as well.


First we are focusing on initial letter sounds, so Ethan and I are taking one box at a time and looking for things that start with that letter / sound.  I also put in the magnetic letter and some letter writing cards in each box. 


Ethan loves going on scavenger hunts through his toy boxes to find items to put in his sounds boxes.  We make the sound as we're searching 'a - a - a - a' and then every time we pick something up we say 'a - a - a - banana, does that start with a?  Nooooooo' then try again 'a - a - a - apple, does that start with a? Yesssss, put it in the box!' Ethan doesn't always get them right, but he does have fun trying.  And it's made me realise how many random little toys we have, ha ha!