5 years on...

Focus on Phonics was launched 5 years ago as a small, family run internet business. I thought I would use this opening blog to give a bit of background.

As the owner of a Montessori Nursery School in Hampshire, I used to receive catalogues from educational suppliers that were filled with pages of great resources for young children.

As a mum of two small children myself at the time, I found it surprising how few of those great resources could be found on the High Street.

Having moved to Surrey, I worked as a volunteer in local schools, helping children learn to read with phonics. Because I no longer had access to the educational catalogues, I spent many hours making resources and trying to find what I could on the internet, but it was hard work.

So came the idea of setting up an internet shop where parents could go and find all the resources they needed in one place, along with some information for those who wanted to help their children learn to read with phonics.

One of our most popular pages has been the Hear the Sounds page – where children can click on a letter (or letters) to hear how to say the sound in a ‘pure’ way (with no ‘uh’ at the end of the consonants) – so important when the time comes to blend sounds into words.

5 years on, we remain a small, family run internet business but big changes have taken place since those early days. One of the biggest changes has been that, since 2006, all primary schools are expected to teach phonics to children in Reception. Many schools now use one of the main commercial programmes such as Jolly Phonics or Read Write Inc., or follow the Letters and Sounds programme. Although The Letters and Sounds programme is free to schools, unlike the commercial programmes, it comes with no resources. Teachers therefore either have to make their own, or try to find suitable resources to support their teaching.

We now offer Jolly Phonics and Read Write Inc. programmes, resources specifically made to support Letters and Sounds plus many more Activities and Games that are suitable for parents to use at home and teachers to use in the classroom.

5 years ago it was very difficult to find suitable decodable reading books – an essential part of learning to read with phonics. Today, there are really good books available – I particularly like the Dandelion Launchers and Readers that were published last year and they seem to be proving popular with parents and teachers alike.

Customers often ask if we have a catalogue but, because we are always trying to improve the range of what we can offer, a hard copy would soon be out of date!

So our website continues to grow with the times. If you haven’t visited us yet, or if you have and you didn’t find what you were looking for, we would love to hear from you!