Letter from Ms. Jenn: Zoophonics!

We love Zoo-Phonics at Jellybean! If you haven't heard of Zoo-Phonics, here's the jist: every letter has an animal associated with it and every animal has a sound that they make and a gesture that goes along with it. For example, Allie Alligator is for A and she makes the aaa sound while you move your arms like an alligator's mouth. The process is very smart in the way that it associates the animal, name, sound, and movement with the letter.

We've had so much success with it since we began this journey last fall. It's a part of our curriculum as well as our daily group time activity, both in the preschool room and infant/toddler room. We have gone over it so much that our one and a half year olds do the correct movement and sound whenever they see an elephant or a gorilla. It's remarkable how well they remember all of it.

There are so many ways you can utilize this program in your child's day to day activities as well. Along with the obvious (flashcards, posters, demonstrations during dinner, etc), you can play along with these animals during play. Such as: dressing up as Allie Alligator, putting on a puppet show with the zoo-phonics friends, coloring Allie Alligator after practicing writing our letter A's, picking out the letter A's with tweezers and dropping them in Allie's mouth, etc. Learning about our letters and letter sounds can be so much fun and so easy!

If you want some more resources and want to know how to purchase your own zoo-phonics set, please visit their website for more information! You won't regret it!