Any comment on Alison's Lettleland Chird Care Center

[Dim Sum]

I discussed with some of my teacher friends about phonics and they said that letterland phonics was popular in Hong Kong, but I am more familiar with Jolly Phonics and I found that my little ones had good results. Does anyone know the difference?


JC

[carang]

phonics is phonics. the letters still make the same sounds. it's just how it is presented. i've taught privately in HK for 12 years and have had success with my own instruction, never using a pre-made set such as jolly phonics or letterland.

so long as the children have a good grounding in the basics and are taught in a fun way so that they will remember, it doesn't matter which you follow.

good luck and have fun!

[neo2008]

We have attended the baby buddies class for two months in Tin Hau centre (me, the mommy, not the nanny). The teacher on NOT the Tuesday class is fine and very friendly. But the premises is very small. But the one in Causeway Bay is horrible. A very small area with three classes going on at the same time that NO on can hear what they children or teachers are talking. It's very very hard to concentrate or even to learn. The toilet is unisex and the children get confused of going to the "gender" right toilet and is very very small.

Anyway, most teachers are very loving but the facilities and the school management is very very bad. They require teachers to do a lot of adminstrative work and has no adminstrative staff.

You should check out yourself because everyone's perspective is different. I heard great things about the school as well so that's why we joined the class in the first place.

[aliu]

Ali100, peace and carang,

Thanks for your comments. As I am living in Lamtin - Kowloon area, Sunshine and Woodland are too far away from home, is there any similar pre-school that's located in the city that can recommend?

Ali100, is your son now studying in Alison letterland?:bighug

we live in lamtin too and I would like to check out Think International Nursery, it is starting from 2 years old. have you heard anything about it?

[bekyboo44]

The main difference between Letterland phonics and Jolly phonics is the order in which the sounds of the letters (phenomes) are taught!

In Letterland phonics the letter sounds are taught alphabetically....in Jolly phonics they are not.

Today most phonics experts would argue against teaching the phenomes alphabetically....the whole point of phonics is to teach children how to blend the letter sounds together to read and spell words.

In Jolly phonics the first letter sounds children learn are,
s a t i p n
and so straight away they are able to spell and read words,
sat, sit, pin, pat etc.
And so straight away they realise why they are learning the sounds, and they get that sense of accomplishment that they can read!

If the sounds are taught alphabetically then that connection can take longer to make.

Letterland was very popular in the late 1980s/ early 1990s, but the emphasis now is very much on synthetic phonics.

For more info, better explained than I can do it, you can check out, www.getreadingright.com