If you have read any of the articles from the FunLab blog archive, you know that we love the idea of LEARNING BY DOING. Over the years we have introduced different strategies to do so including Book Club and Language through Art. When I received the Jolly Learning Bumper Book, it took me just 1 minute to realize what an amazing tool this book is for teachers. Let me put it this way – if you are looking to do LEARNING BY DOING – the Bumper Book is a gold standard for getting started.
So what is in the Jolly Learning bumper book? Each of the 42 sounds of Jolly Phonics has two pages dedicated to different approaches to Learning by Doing. Of course, you can find the standard motions and lyrics to the Jolly Phonics songs. However, it does not stop there. Each sound has an elaborate expansion on teaching the sound which includes ideas for:
- books to read
- things to make (I love this one!)
- investigations
- recipes
I hope that I have not missed any of them but trust me there are ideas for mutiple different aproaches to reinforcing what was done during your phonics lesson. Click on this link to get a sneak peak into the contents available on the two pages per sound.
I love using books (see our book club posts!) as a way to develop English language skills. However, I have to admit that we had used books to teach emotions/animals and seasons (just to name a few) but the idea to use books to reinforce sounds was new to me. I decided to do an experiment during our yearly bilingual summer camp. All our campers do Jolly Phonics during the school year so in theory they should already know the sounds. I thought that it would be fun to do a review of the diagraph SH. We did a brainstorming with the kids telling us the words that they know in English with the SH sound it in. I was so surpised with the English vocabulary words that they remembered!
We then did story telling using the book recommended in the SH pages. I picked SHARK IN THE PARK by Nick Sharratt. There are others recommended but the story in the book really made me giggle. After we read the book, we had the kids create a shark headband. We turned our campers into a classroom of little SH-arks! I found the template (link) for this craft on the wonderful blog – Simple Everyday Mom.
I was really pleased with the results. The children chanted “SH like shark” as they came down the school stairs wearing their headbands. I hope that my enthusiam for the Jolly Learning Bumper Book is contagious. I loved finding the idea for the workshop in the book and then seeing how well it developed in the classroom.
The Jolly Learning Bumper Book will be available at www.funlab.it starting in September 2021. Make sure you get a copy and try working it into your phonics program. We would love to hear back with your stories.
If you teach English as a second language, we just published an article that you might find helpful – TEACHING THE SEASONS FUNLAB STYLE!
stay tuned for more ideas
Alison
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