Enchanting Learning Phonics and Storytelling Cards

These dynamic sets of learning cards are designed to give a range of learning opportunities for young, evolving readers and writers from the grass roots of pre-reading ( Age 3+) through to more independent creative writing later on ( Age 8-10). They come beautifully presented and are created sustainability and ethically in the UK.

We are delighted announce that we won Bronze in The Junior Design Awards for Best Educational Creative Play!

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Information for using the cards

Practise ‘Real’ Words

On the back of each card, you will find a list of practise words for the phonics sound represented. These words are designed to be readable right away as they tend to contain sounds that have been learnt or are soon to be learnt. Sometimes, the main word relating to the picture on the front of the card is not readable early on, it will be once your child has built up their full bank of phonic sounds. Use the practise words for decoding (sounding out) and aim for your child to be able to read the practise words before writing them.

Word Treasure Hunt: Write the words as a list and then onto individual pieces of paper which are then hidden. Your reader searches and ticks them off as they find them!
Gloop writing: Messy but fun...mix up a shallow tray of corn flour and water and write the words one at a time in the gloop. Your reader has to try to read the word before the gallop reforms. Then switch tasks!

Here are some fun ways to use these words:

Practise ‘Nonsense’ Words

On the back of each learning card, you will find a list of nonsense (pseudo) words. These words are designed to support the decoding (sounding out) process. Part of the phonics process involves being able to read words that do not exist. This skill shows us that learners are building a phonic code in their memory bank and can apply it without using the memory of the full word. Great for reading long unknown words like scientific words or foreign words!

An illustration of a boy holding a book.

Here are some fun ways to use these words:

Word Building: Write all the different graphemes ( letters or letter combinations) onto small squares of paper and challenge your reader to build the nonsense words on the cards or from a list you have written.
Word Sort:Have all the practise words from one card ( green and blue) written on slips of paper and ask your reader to sort them into real or nonsense words by reading each one.

A phonics card showing a lollipop for the /l/ sound.

Capital Letters & Alliteration

On the back of each learning card, you will find a little phrase of alliteration and a demonstration of how and when to use a capital letter. Capital letters are used at the start of a new sentence and at the start of a proper noun. It is really important for children to recognise capital letters as they will be cropping up in the books they are reading. The alliteration rhyme is a fun way to make each sound memorable, we call these 'mind hooks'. Anything that helps to solidify the phonemes and graphemes in our reader’s memory is going to be a huge help.

Alliteration is the head rhyme heard when a string of words have the same starting sound which does not have to be spelt the same. eg. Tiny, tired tadpoles... seeing seagulls in the City.

An illustartion of an elephant walking out of the long grass.

Excellent Elephant called Eric.

Learning Card showing the /e/ sound and the word elephant.

Magical Story and Conversation Starters

Sound stars and wiggles

On the back of each learning card, you will find something a bit enchanting and magical to talk about…

Each card gives either a story starter for you and your child to then build upon or a statement to discuss, these cards double up as storytelling cards! The words are linked to the illustration on the front to aid the imaginative process. Talking about stories and using the imagination can have huge benefits to langauge development which feeds straight into reading and writing. Stories and imaginative thought can positively shape children’s perception of the world and exploring things that are unknown to them can lead to greater acceptance of people’s differences.

Learn More about Storytelling

The road was lit by the first rays of the sunrise and this car was choosing its own path...

You will see the star sitting under single letter sounds

( graphemes) such as: d /c

The wiggle sits nicely under the digraphs and trigraphs, these are the sounds that contain more than one letter such as: igh / qu

The shooting star sits above a split-vowel digraph ( sometimes known as 'magic e'). When the vowels are split by a consonant and the word ends in an e, the first vowel sounds like its letter name.

Our Set One phonics sounds are introduced in this order to allow for early decoding ( reading) opportunities:

s,a,t,p,i,n,m,d,g,o,c,k,e,u,r,h,b,f,l,j,v,w,x,y,z,qu

Set one contains single letter sounds to allow for our capital letter element included in set one. Most phonic programmes introduce some digraphs slightly earlier on, our cards are not a stand alone programme but, across the three sets of learning cards, do cover all sounds in all major worldwide phonic programmes and are designed to be complimentary.