Unfold the letters and form your silly word. It’s more likely than not going to make a word that isn’t real ZOK, KAM, DOV, PUM etc. That’s OK. I explain why below* But don’t panic. I can explain it in five minutes (way less actually, it’s really simple!) and I recently did a short series of videos which linked below, where I explain it all, one minute at a time. Get a bag or small container. Any will do. I’ve used a shiny gift bag or an empty tissue box before. You can have a fancy one or an Aldi bag for life. Doesn’t matter. So what do you do? Here’s what you do. You set up the activity while they are busy/asleep/out and then when ready you START TO PLAY YOURSELF. And when they approach you say casually, “Do you want to try/play too?” and once you’ve got their interest you start to explain what to do. Help them to blend the sounds together to make the crazy word. Laugh about what it could be. Is it an alien name or a robot word?

An exclusive first look at Five Minute Mum: Time for School with the Maths chapter. It may not clear all those home school headaches, but it will make life easier- and a bit more fun too! When they’ve blended the word, pop it in the little bowl and let them tip the silly soup over your head or their head. Whichever they find funnier. Now make some more silly soup! So you’ll often hear me in my videos using the correct letter names and then saying the sound it is making. Another thing I’ve seen in practice is people saying the correct letter names for capital letters and then the most common sounds for the lower case, which really annoys me off because why make it even more confusing??! Always let the kids come to you. Try not to clap your hands and say “OK kids we are going to do this activity now.” Even in your best ‘Meryl Streep THIS IS GOING TO BE AWESOME acting voice’, they KNOW. They just KNOW. In their little heads they go…”Yep, you’re trying to teach me something. I’m not having it Mum. Sod off. This bit of card that’s been on the floor for three days has suddenly taken my interest.” Then after that, we often run around the house looking for something that has the SOUND that letter makes in it…I will often help and prompt by saying things like “I can see something with a h in it, am I looking at the hat, or the car?” and let them see if they can hear the H sound in the word hat. The sound doesn’t have to be at the beginning of the word. So for example if your letter of the day is X you might want to use box as the thing you find. After you’ve found an object, see if they want to draw it on the paper or post-its.I love Five Minute Mum. She's managed to come up with a huge array of activities for kids that are fun and educational yet don't require an Art degree or Diploma in Patience to execute. Her blog makes these kinds of games accessible to everyone and for that, I am grateful! - Sarah Turner, Unmumsy Mum Or if you really want to understand phonics clearly then I made this hour long video here which talks you through it all slowly (as I swig a gin!) I made this video during the pandemic when people couldn’t visit schools, like they usually would, to join a parents evening where this sort of thing is usually explained. It goes through the phonics phases reception class (first year of school) will usually cover in detail and explains all the terminology like blending and segmenting and digraphs etc. So what to do as a parent? Well, keep it simple. Either use the correct name for the letters as in the alphabet song or the SOUND the letters makes as per phonics. Try not to use ‘muh’ for M, ‘puh’ for P, ‘suh’ for S - you get the idea….! It is crucial at this point to try and do something SILLY. Get it wrong yourself, laugh, make a funny noise. Engage the child at their level of fun. You want them to think “Mummy is PLAYING and I want to play this too.” Maths is taken from Five Minute Mum: Time for School- the ultimate handbook to support your child through Early Years, Reception and KS1 - available from 15 April 2021.

And the reason I don’t only teach Ewan the sounds the letters make but the names of the letter is because if I taught him the E in his name is an ‘Eh’ then it’s rather confusing that it makes a “U” sound in his name. So instead I always say its an “Eeee” because it is - no adult spells their name over the phone as ‘Duh, ah, ii, ssssssss, yuh’ so I don’t see why children shouldn’t know the proper letter names and then be taught that they can make lots of sounds right from the get go (but this is my own personal feeling!) after all, they all sing the bloody Alphabet song.This game is called Silly Soup and anyone who has worked with children in EYFS will have played it or a version of it I’m sure. But no-one tells the parents!!! Except me. Ha. I’m blowing the top right off all those teacher secrets aren’t I?! 😉 Name the ingredients magical names with your paper and pen. I had powdered flies, frog juice, witch brew, beetle eyes, golden wizard. This short chapter is all based around the maths your child will be taught in their first few years at school - Early Years, Reception and Key Stage 1 - will bring some much-needed laughter to your at-home learning and, if nothing else, give you five minutes where you feel like you are getting it right. Plus imagine you’re like a Kardashian who only named their children with CH names - Christopher, Charlotte, Chloe and Charlie - and then school tells them ‘Ch’ is CHuh as in Cheese, which is the first sound they teach. What the hell do Chloe, Charlotte and Christopher think?! It’s ‘see’ and ‘aitch’ and together they often make the sound ‘Chuh’ like cheese but can also make other sounds too.

Cut up empty toilet-roll tubes and write letters on them. Use a kitchen-roll holder or a broom handle to put the letters on and construct the words vertically. Lay out 5 pots, each with a potion ingredient in. One with the bicarbonate of soda, one with the vinegar, I also then had - one with coloured water, one with water beads, one with lemon juice. But you can use whatever you like.

Mix up the letters in the big bowl saying “Silly soup, silly soup, we’re going to make some silly soup” Now, as someone who worked in a Reception class and knows lots of lovely Reception teachers, rest assured…NOTHING IS EXPECTED of them in terms of letters and numbers when they start school. The teacher will start at the beginning, counting to ten and teaching the letters and sounds one by one. However that doesn’t stop me wanting to give Ewan a head start! 😉 Anyway I’ll stop jabbering on now. There are PLENTY of fab resources online and Jolly Phonics on You Tube are a good place to start if you want to get to know the initial ‘Sounds’ your child will be introduced to through Phonics in a fun way or I did some Letter of the Day videos which can be found on my You Tube channel.

Write letters on ball-pit balls and use a muffin tin or cups or cupcake cases to hold them to create the words. Time for Home School: Maths is THE book you need if you're home-schooling, from former teaching assistant, bestselling author and social media superstar Daisy Upton AKA Five Minute Mum. However I have always found children to be self absorbed little sods and so I have always started with the letters in their name when playing at home, rather than S A T P I N which they do at nursery. The crucial point is this though, as it is with all my games. Only if he WANTS to. The games are there to provide fun and entertainment for us all. The letter and number bits I put into them are there as a way to bring those vital educational elements into our play without it detracting from the joy. Learning through play always. Tie string from somewhere high to somewhere low. I tied it to an upstairs window and to our slide in the garden below.I started following Carmel as she shared Zoe’s journey. Zoe was such a beautiful spirit. She loved fairies and rainbows and singing, and so much more. She would have been brilliant friends with my Florence had they ever met. Zoe died on 1st July 2020, and I along with many other sobbed as Carmel shared her incredible little girl’s final moments, listening and wishing SO much the outcome had been different. Encourage your little ones to write a letter. A magical one! To a Harry Potter character, to the fairies, to a naughty troll, to the Christmas elf. For Florence who is just 4, she told me what she wanted the letter to say, I wrote it down and she signed her name. We are skipping at a frightening pace towards my eldest starting school now. The summer holidays are here, and parents with older children are wondering what to do with six weeks at home entertaining their kids while I try to soak up every second of my wee man before classroom antics turn him into a 12 year old in a heartbeat. Next year I will be that Mum…but for now, it is school that is on my mind this summer and one question; IS HE READY? Nursery doesn’t start with ABC (ay, bee, see) anymore, instead they teach the SOUNDS the letters makes. Which is all Phonics means (phon means sound) because this makes it easier for children to ‘blend’ the sounds/letters together to make a word and therefore read. So instead of saying ‘Suh’ or ‘ess’ for S, they learn ‘sssssss’ (hiss like a snake sound) so when your child reads the word ‘sit’ they sound out ‘sssssss-i-t’ as opposed to ‘suh-i-t’ which would be ‘suhit’ - no such word (no shuit!). I used the example of MOP on my videos. Saying an ‘M’ is a ‘muh’ and ‘P’ is a ‘Per’ means when the children see the letters MOP they would say ‘muopa’ - again, no such word. So the sound for M is ‘mmmm’ and the sound for P is a very short soft P(uh) with the emphasis on the P. First of all you could try showing them how to write the letter onto the paper or post-its, both capital and lower case and see if they want to copy and have a try too.