Excel Early Skills - English: Book 3 - Beginning Consonant Sounds

Fantastic! Here's why...

28 April 2019

Book 3 Beginning Consonant Sounds utilises five different activities to explore the consonant sounds, in four groups ( b - f, g - l, m - s, t - z). To begin, there is a contents page, and page of stickers to be placed in a circle at the bottom of each page. There is then a page explaining how to use the book, how to script to the child and pencil grip instructions. There are then four pages of the sounds, these pages are found in many of the books in the series, a as in (picture of an apple). These four pages cover the short vowels and the consonants. These should be instructed by sounding the phoneme, "ah", not by reading the grapheme, "ay". The intent of the book is to instruct the child to sound the phonemes, not memorise the graphemes. Activity One is an eye spy, with a letter surrounded by simple black and white outline drawings of objects, two letters per page, two pages. For example, b surrounded by a picture of a bell, a can, a ball, a goat, a fish and a cricket bat. Activity Two is a grid of nine pictures per page, two pages, each picture with two letter options directly below it. For example, a picture of a fish, with d and f below it. Activity 3 has the letter in a box at the start of a row, with three pictures of potential objects beginning with that sound, one is correct. Four rows per page, two pages. Activity Four is similar, but there are two pictures to circle, and the letter is on the right hand end of the row ready to be traced. Activity Five each row has two pictures, and a tick or cross. If both the pictures start with the same sounds, circle the tick. There are four rows per page, two pages. At the end of the book, there is practice tracing for each of the sounds. There is a merit certificate, and printed onto the inside back, guidelines for forming the letters correctly. At the bottom of each page are simple extension activities (colouring, finding real life objects that begin with the sounds, etc). The format is simple, with minimal embellishment, black and white except for the page border (in this case purple). This book, and many in this series, are fantastic. They are easy to open and go, offer specific practice at one skill (identifying beginning consonant sounds) and repeat the activities in such way as to build confidence and fluency for the child. You could opt to instruct the sounds in what ever order you chose, although they are provided alphabetically. You could opt to cover many sounds, or a single sound in one session. There is enough range in complexity to challenge more advanced children, whilst also catering for those just beginning. Highly rated by myself and my four year old in Kindergarten.

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