Phonics games/videos/music? Also ETC?

[sixpence1978]

I am using Abeka for K5 phonics this year. It worked wonderfully a couple of years ago with my DS, but my DD is not taking to it quite as well.

Are there any games, videos, music...anything interactive and catchy for a wiggle one, that would be a good addition? Most everything I see is based on word families. Since Abeka teaches with the word beginnings, and my DD already struggles with reversals and changing letter order, I thought that anything that has a word family approach to it, would really confuse her.

What is out there that does not rely on word families?

Also, we have hit the point in her Letters & Sounds workbook that is moving on to long vowel sounds. I don't think she is quite ready for that yet. I would like to get the short vowel words coming a bit smoother first. Would ETC 1&2 be a good supplement for her? Or do they also do a word family approach?

Thanks so much!

[ELaurie]

the Leap Frog Letter Factory (http://www.amazon.com/s/?ie=UTF8&keywords=leapfrog+videos&tag=googhydr-20&index=aps&hvadid=1146665321&ref=pd_sl_78e2oqgoj_b) series :)

[King Alfred Academy]

Not sure if this is what you are looking for, but have you tried www.starfall.com? My ds5 LOVES it!

[ElizabethB]

I have a bunch!

Here's my favorite, it makes both nonsense and regular words, very helpful to keep remedial students sounding out words from left to right instead of guessing, but also good for beginners:

http://www.thephonicspage.org/On%20Phonics/concentrationgam.html

I also play games with magnetic letters on cookie sheets. Give them 6-8 consonants they have learned so far and a vowel and have them see how many words they can make! Once they get good at this, see how many words they can make in 1 minute.

Read, Write, and Type is also a fun program. It's expensive, but you can download a demo to see if it'll be worth the money for you.

http://www.talkingfingers.com/

Blend phonics is a good free program that you could use to supplement, it avoids word families, and the blend phonics reader avoids them even more and discourages guessing from word shape:

http://donpotter.net/Blend%20Phonics.htm

Sing, Spell, Read, and Write is catchy but expensive. A free fun alternative is Pollard's series, links about halfway down this page:

http://www.thephonicspage.org/On%20Reading/phonicsandspelli.html

[Karen in CO]

the Leap Frog Letter Factory (http://www.amazon.com/s/?ie=UTF8&keywords=leapfrog+videos&tag=googhydr-20&index=aps&hvadid=1146665321&ref=pd_sl_78e2oqgoj_b) series :)
:iagree:
All the leapfrog videos are wonderful from phonics letters to blending then silent e.

[sixpence1978]

We do have the Letter Factory and the Talking Words Factory. Those are really big hits! I credit the Letter Factory for teaching her how to learn her letter sounds.

Those links all look great. I also found somebody locally selling their SSRW for $40 so I think I'll go ahead and implement that too.

[Gwenny]

I got a book from the library called Primary Phonics: Games by Monday Morning Press. It has tons of file folder games that you reproduce and glue to a file folder. They store very flat and my daughter enjoys them. It has games for short vowels, long vowels, and the rest are mostly broken down by digraphs or beginning and end blends.

They also have Primary Phonics: Skills with lots of other ideas for teaching phonics.

Gwen

[Aurelia]

ETC does words by vowel, like the first unit is short A words - the entire first lesson is -at words, then it moves on to words like can, had, fan, bad, etc.

We have used www.starfall.com off and on and liked it, my daughter's favorite so far has been www.readingeggs.com, though. It's Australian (just a warning since DD thought the way they said some of the words "sounded funny"), but well done IMO, and it really helped her fluency. You can get 2 weeks to try it out to begin with, and if you fill out the questionnaire they email you when your trial is nearly up, you can get an additional 2 weeks before deciding if you want a subscription.