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Teacher and consultant, Christine Barker shares some ideas for using our new Phonics Pebbles.
These pebbles offer an interesting visual and tactile way of introducing young children to letters and sounds. They can be used in many ways, both indoors and outdoors, to support phonics teaching, and give children opportunities to independently show you what they can do.

Phoneme recognition
As soon as children have learnt a few phonemes it is important that they have plenty of opportunities to reinforce, practise and apply their new knowledge.  The games below can be played very simply with only one of two pebbles to start with, then increasing the number of pebbles over time. They can also be easily adapted to suit the needs and interests of the children, perhaps by choosing words that are related to a topic.

What’s in the bag?
Show children a collection of objects containing the focus phonemes. Put them into an attractive bag or box, saying the name of each object as you do so and emphasising the focus phoneme at the beginning, end or middle of the word. Show children the corresponding pebbles and put these on a tray. Pass the bag round the circle, with each child taking a turn to pull out an object, say its name and match the initial sound with the correct pebble on the tray.  Everyone says the name of the object together and puts thumbs up if they agree with the child whose turn it is.
As the children become more familiar with the phonemes they can take turns to feel for an object, point to the pebble with the phoneme at the start, end or middle of its name and ask the other children to guess what the object is. If they guess correctly the object can go next to the corresponding pebble.

Hidden treasure
The above game can be easily transferred into the sand or water tray. You could hide a selection of pebbles in the sand or in bubbly water, and ask the children to choose an object from the bag then dig or ‘fish’ for the correct initial, end or middle  phoneme. You could also take it outdoors by giving children a pebble and a bag, and asking them to look around and find items with the phoneme on their pebble at the start, end or middle. 

Sort the sounds
As children become more confident, the pebbles can also be used for sorting objects with or without a focus phoneme, such as those with ai in them or without ai. You could also use them to sort objects by focus phonemes, such as those containing ai, ee or igh. When moving on to alternative spellings, objects could also be sorted into those containing each spelling of the same sound, such as ur, er or ir.

Take a look at our new Phonics Pebbles and other resources in our Active Phonics range.