Providing a literacy rich environment for children in their early years will create the foundation for the children's future reading and writing ability.
In our N1 age group we introduce the concept of individual reading and group reading time. Using our specifically developed Sight Word Staters the children are introduced to pre-reading skills and concepts.
We take care to stock our schools with high quality picture books that are both fiction and non-fiction.
We provide a lending library of level readers for our older classes, and make sure that story time is part of our daily routine in every class.
Our Literacy program has been developed by Kinder Kids professional teaching staff. We believe that by introducing components of reading and writing through games and songs, that children can develop skills and confidence at an early age.
Our program is based on two key components, synthetic phonics and sight words.
Phonics
We have an original phonics system with cute, easy-to-remember characters for each phonetic sound. The characters and their associated stories and songs make it easier for the children to remember the sounds.
From our N2 year,, children begin reading level readers and find instant success due to their strong phonics base. This builds confidence and ensures enjoyment in the reading process.
Our class levels are also named after our characters.
Busy Bee, Frozen Frog, Laughing Leopard, Dancing Dinosaur, Incredible Iguana
- Busy Bee
- Frozen Frog
- Laughing Leopard
- Dancing Dinosaur
- Incredible Iguana
Children also experience early success in spelling with our structured introduction to sounds and words.
This helps when they produce their own compositions as they are soon able to write easily decodable spellings and communicate through their writing.
Sight Words
A Sight Word is a word that frequently occurs in literature and cannot necessarily be decoded using phonics skills alone. At Kinder Kids, we choose to teach children a set of words to read from memory. This increases their reading efficiency, and therefore their confidence.
Our Kinder Kids Sight Words list was compiled after a careful study of two existing lists: The Dolch List (which catalogues the most commonly occurring words in children's literature) and the Fry List (which referenced all branches of English literature).
This research was then combined with our years of teaching experience to assemble the Kinder List. In our list, certain words have been coupled together, e.g. 'these' and 'those', 'when' and 'if' to help children to compare and contrast the spelling and meaning of these words.
In addition to the Phonics and Sight Words elements of our Literacy curriculum, we also have a Handwriting program for practicing letter formation. This program begins in N1 Class with manipulation of play dough and other fine motor skills exercises, followed by tracing lines and shapes.
From Kinder 1 the children begin to engage in focused writing practice.
Children learn to apply these Phonics, Sight Words, Handwriting, and sentence building skills by writing compositions in their journals.
We are very proud of the level that the children can achieve and of their enjoyment of the writing process.