Useful Links 

Pencil Control and Letter Formations

For general pen control a useful series of books are:
Nursery Writing

For children who require practise with their letter formations a good series of books are:
Early Writing
Start at book 2 if you want to head straight to letter formations.

Children may need prompting or reminding to use the tripod grip. Triangle pencils can help to reinforce this grip.

On this site you can make your own handwriting sheets:
www.handwritingworksheets.com

Phonics

At Melrose House we follow Phase 1, 2 and the beginning of Phase 3 of the Letters and Sounds Phonics programme.  We focus on these sounds:

Set 1: s, a, t, p
Set 2: i, n, m, d
Set 3: g, o, c, k
Set 4: ck, e, u, r
Set 5: h, b, f, ff, l, ll, ss

Set 6: j, v, w, x
Set 7: y, z, zz, qu
Consonant Digraphs: sh, ch, th, ng

1. At the beginning, teach children the letter sounds rather than their names (/a/ rather than /ai/, /b/ rather than /bee/).
2. Work out the difference between 'blending for reading' and 'segmenting for spelling'. More information.
3. Model correct and accurate pronunciation 
4. Subscribe to Phonics Play for £12/year.
5. Brush up or learn anew about what phonics is from Oxford Owl
6. Supplement work done at school with workbooks such as these from Schofield and Sims: Letters and Sounds Phonic Scheme - Phase 1  

Other links

A popular game with the children at the moment: Teddy Numbers

For ebooks and maths activities follow: Oxford Owl

To sing the songs from our Phonic sessions follow: Letters and Sounds Phase 2

Can you pop the correct phoneme?: Phoneme Pop

Can you work out the real and pretend words?  Dragons' Den

Subscription Websites:

For a mixture of educational games follow: Poisson Rouge

For a focus on Maths and English try: Busythings

For a range of educational games for all ages try: Education City