Above you will see price and availability details for Jolly Phonics by from the leading UK book stores.
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Exteremely Dated - Rated
The concept of this DVD is good and I particularly like the way it teaches children to write the letters of the Alphabet. Unfortunately, it's very dated and the production quality isn't fantastic. Some of the children I showed it to find it very boring.
I would reccomend parents to perhaps buy something produced more recently.
Phonics is the way to go - Rated
This lovely DVD is well under rated! I bought this for my 3 year old, but with my eldest (9 year old) in mind who completely missed out on phonics at school. In fact all 4 of my children have really enjoyed the stories. My 3 year old has already grasped the single letters with their sounds and names and is enthusiasticly working on the blended sounds in only a few weeks. She even started writing the letters herself with almost no help. There was no stopping her! The difference it makes with reading, writting and spelling is amazing. Why ever did schools stop doing phonics?!
Very dated, and somewhat inaccurate - Rated
It's a shame that the DVD release of Jolly Phonics didn't feature an updated film, instead of a transfer of the old videos. Jolly Phonics itself is a nice idea, and one of several synthetic phonics packages available for teaching pre-reading to early reading skills.
There is quite a bit of technology featured in this DVD which looks very dated: for instance, several of the children I work with did not even recognise the CRT monitor of the computer 'Phonic' as part of a computer.
It's also a shame that the synthetic phonics system itself is not adhered to in the production of the film footage - for example, instead of pronouncing 's' for the sound made by the letter 'S', Inky Mouse, Snake, Bee and Phonic are often heard saying 'suh' - adding an unnecessary vowel sound to the target sound... something which can be confusing and counterproductive to children whose learning to sound words is the basis for reading.
On the plus side, children who have been learning Jolly Phonics can identify quite closely with the characters... particularly Inky Mouse
