Zoo Animal Phonics! Learn Letter Sounds & Identify the Letters in the Alphabet

Let's learn the alphabet and letter sounds with Zoo-Phonics!  In order to learn how to read learners must have phonemic awareness.  Phonemic awareness is helping children see how speech sounds match letters for future reading, spelling, and writing.  It is discovering and connecting letter sounds which form words by isolating the sounds, by identifying syllables, and by building words and breaking them apart.  Phonemic awareness is a precursor to phonics. 

Phonics is taught with lowercase letters first because of the amount of lowercase print in literature.  We use lowercase letters for reading and writing 95% of the time!  Capital letters are only used 5% of the time in text and for a very specific purpose. Capital letters are harder for children to form than lowercase.  Forming triangles or any diagonal or intersecting line is difficult because it forces them to draw a line from mid-section of their body upward or downward, outward or inward, which is very difficult for this age group.  It is also very difficult to read in all capital letters because they are all the same size; the eye needs white space surrounding the letters.  Reading in all capital letters slows down the reading process because it is harder to quickly discern the letter shapes.  If children are taught capital letters first, they most often continue this when writing down their thoughts on paper and inappropriately write with all capital letters or a mixture of capitals and lowercase letters.  When learning capital letters with Zoo-Phonics, your child will also learn the rules and purposes for capitalization: 1. At the beginning of a sentence. 2. To begin a proper noun (person, place, or thing).  

Marilyn Jaeger Adams states, "In respect to teaching uppercase and lowercase letters, current learning theory holds only one suggestion...Teachers should not try to teach both versions of all twenty-six letters at the same time.  To try simultaneously to teach two visually distinct forms with identical responses amid fifty other confusable forms with confusable sounds and labels [letter names] will almost guarantee learning difficulties."

Letter sounds are also taught before letter names because we use the sounds to read and spell not the letter names.  Letter names often have a sound of their own, unlike the sound it actually makes in a word, for example, "c" in cat.  We will not focus on the letter names in this class because this would be introducing yet another sound thus confusing your child.  Zoo-Phonics firmly believes that letter names and capital letters are secondary in importance in early literacy.

Using animals like the ones in the Zoo-Phonics curriculum helps students remember the shapes and the sounds of the letters.  The animals in this curriculum take on the shape of the coinciding letter.  The shapes also help learners know where to start the letter when they begin writing the letters.  Zoo-Phonics also incorporates movement which helps cement the information into memory.  The animal names   When students hear, see, say, and do they remember 70-100% of the given information, whereas, when a learner only hears the information, they only retain 10%, when they hear and see they retain 30%, and when they hear, see, and say the retain only 40%.  

Zoo-Phonics is not only taught sequentially, but it is also taught as a whole from day 1.  Each day we will focus specifically on a letter, but we will also practice the entire alphabet.  Zoo-Phonics presents capital, or uppercase, letters when capital letters look like their lowercase counterparts are presented before other capital letters.  When teaching capital letters, the rules and purposes for capitalization is also taught.

Each day, we will begin class with an introduction to all of the letters.  Then we will sing "It Sounds Like This and It Looks Like That."  Next, we will focus on the letter of the day.  We will practice the letter sound, body signal, as well as letter identification.  We will take turns sharing an item from our homes that start with the letter of the day, for example, a learner might share an apple on “a” day.  Then we will practice writing letters by tracing letters in a shallow pan (like a cookie sheet or an art tray) with sand, salt, or anything similar inside just covering the bottom.  If we have extra time we will play a game to help practice letter sounds.

Upon enrollment learners will receive a PDF with a picture and description of the body signals (kinesthetic movement) for each letter, as well as the name of each animal, or character.  The body signals help cement phonemic and phonetic information into the brain.  The body signal is also responsible for helping children pull the information from the brain when needed.  Without the body signal at the beginning stages of learning to read and spell, many young learners might not have access to phonemic information.

Later, when students are ready to spell words for writing, signaling the words will help to "encode" the word, or form words from letters.  Also, when your child is stuck on a word while reading, they will be able to "decode," or retrieve the sound information by signaling.


Week 1: a & b
Week 2: c & d
Week 3: e & f
Week 4: g & h
Week 5: i & j
Week 6: k & l
Week 7: m & n
Week 8: o & p
Week 9: q & r
Week 10: s & t
Week 11: u & v
Week 12: w & x
Week 13: y & z