At Herecomethegirlsblog.com we understand that education is vitally important to all children but we also understand that it can sometimes be a bit boring and more of a chore to get our little ones to engage with learning. And after a protracted period of home schooling, more than ever we are looking for fun and different ways to help our little Ines learn.
We were really excited to be contacted by Teacher Play to test some of their new products.
About Teacher Play
Teacher Play is a new company, started by a teacher who is also committed to providing fun activities to help children learn.
Suitable Ages For The Teacher Play Phonics And Number Flashcards
Teacher Play Learning Number Cards and Learning Phonics Cards suited our 2 and 5 year olds learning stage. The cards support the Early Years Foundation Stage and The national curriculum so work well alongside your child’s school learning.
The Number Flashcards
The number cards are a wonderful two sided design. On one side is the number written as a digit and also the word, in simple black text. The advantage of this we found is it helped our 2 year old recognise the number but our 5 year old was able to learn quickly the corresponding word, which has helped support her reading. On the other side is a lovely illustration which also gives guidance of how to write the number.
As a mum I found this useful as I was able to use the illustrations to remind my daughter how to write a number even if the cards weren’t to hand. For example if she needed to write the number 4 I would remind her of the monkey and bananas, for number 8 which has always been a bit problematic, I would talk about ‘zooming round the track’. The fun illustrations were easier for my daughter to remember and very quickly she has improved her number writing.
Wipe Clean And Mess Free!
The cards are ‘wipe clean’ so you can also practice writing the number on the card many times. They are also a handy size to take out and about with you for distractions when at dinner or waiting for an appointment – always gets bonus points here at herecomethegirlsblog if we can take things out and about which aren’t heavy and aren’t screens. Our only criticism is the sharp corners as they have become dog eared with the constant use, a rounded corner would probably be longer wearing.
The Phonics Flashcards
Our 5 year old is a big fan of word games. She loves listing words that begin with the same letter or rhyme. We were starting to find though that as parents we were sometimes struggling to illustrate to her more complex sounds and spellings. The Learning Phonics Cards from Teacher Play have really helped advance her learning and understanding of sounds and spelling, and mine! I never learnt phonics at school – it was THAT long ago, so the way children learn to read now is new to me.
Each card is printed on both sides, again on wipe clean card so that children can practice writing letters many times. On one side, the sound is printed in clear black letters with four illustrations and words to show how it is used. The other side is a larger drawing, guidance on how to draw the letters and a sentence with the sound used twice or more in it to really show children how and when it is used and when they have heard it.
As with the number cards our daughter very quickly was able to associate a word with a picture and her reading vastly improved as she recognised or sounded out words far more easily. It also made it easier for us as parents to support reading as again we were able to remind our daughter of pictures to help her visualise a spelling or sound. I particularly liked the cards which illustrated sounds that could be spelled either with letters next to each other or apart for example ‘ue’ in either flute or glue.
Summary
All in all we were very impressed with the Teacher Play products and would definitely recommend them to parents who want to support their children’s learning.
The products can be found on the Teacherplay website along with a number of other resources.
Disclaimer: We were sent these packs as part of this review