Last week Esther and William brought home their first ever homework from school

There was a rocket to colour, a small counting worksheet

And some sounds to practise

g, o, c, k, ck

I decided to try and make homework

As practical as possible for Esther and William

They are only just four

And already have so little time at home to play

The counting I am going to write about separately

Today I want to tell you about our phonics play

And focus in particular on our Yuck Soup

Esther and William were asked to spot things at home that ended in the digraph -ck

They were also asked to find and photograph something with each of the initial sounds g, o, c and k

We had great fun searching the playroom for toys that started with each sound

William also collected things that had the sounds in the middle of the word

And was able to tell me some things that contained more than one of the sounds

They loved the physical act of collecting things

Grouping them and photographing them

We also sounded out the name of each thing

Esther and William have known about kicking k and curly c for well over a year

Because we have done Jolly Phonics at home but also because of character names in Thomas

They may not yet be able to write but they can both type really well

And William is quite incredible at spelling, especially names of trains

He was able to tell me that Cranky begins with curly c and has a kicking k in it

He also collected Stegosaurus for g because it had the sound in the middle

Esther collected most of the g things

And then she linked them all together

By making a garden for a girl

With green grass and a gate

She made the garden for her teacher

But she loved it herself

And has been playing with it

And adding to it for over a week now

Once the collections were complete

I gave Esther and Williams some word cards

All ending in -ck

That I had printed from the Internet

Teachers Pay Teachers I think

First Esther and William looked at the pictures

Guessing what the words might be

Then we sounded out all the words together

They were both surprisingly good at this

William’s target for school is blending and segmenting ccvc words such as pram

Well, in this activity he was easily sounding out tr-u-ck and tr-a-ck

Br-i=ck and bl-o-ck

And he was really enjoying it too

Esther and William love learning

And they are so proud and super excited when they get things right

Once we were familiar with the word cards

We used them to play games such as Snap and Pairs

We also played the What’s Missing? game

Where I would take one word card away

And they would have to say which one it was

Esther really loved this

And taught Daddy how to play the game

The Yuck Soup was the highlight of the homework though

For Esther, William and for me

They first looked at all the ingredients

And listed them with me

Block bl-o-ck

Stick st-i-ck

Sock s-o-ck

Then I just left them to play

Watching carefully

And listening for what they might say

Esther was very much in charge of the soup

With her stirring stick

She pretended to be cooking

William was allowed to do some tasting

When he was not dangling a magnetic truck from a metal spoon

William was most interested in the words

He was very proud of himself for filling a sock

With the peas and pulses making up the soup

Saying he had turned his sock into a sack

The boy loves language play

And is getting to be good at it

As Esther continued to revel in the sensory side of soup play

William continued to toy with words

Working through the trick of putting a truck on the track

Giving the black brick a lick

We had wonderful fun

And amid the smiles and chatter and laughter

Esther and William’s homework for the weekend was done