The Homework Book

The last day of term, Jin came home with everything she'd made in her first month of school tucked under her arm — in the middle of crumpled drawings, she took out a slim exercise book labelled Homework Learning. Inside, her teacher had printed and glued everything neatly: what Jin is currently learning at school, and how we — her parents — can help at home.

The Alphabet

Jin is learning the phoneme (the sound a letter makes) and the grapheme (the name of the letter) — and then how to take those sounds and blend them together to form a word. This is the foundation of reading.
Her teaher asked the parents:  watch a short YouTube clip together. Just a few minutes, every day.

Heart Words

Heart Words, as the name suggests, are words you read with your heart rather than your head. Not sounded out letter by letter — just recognised instantly, the moment they appear on a page. Words like the, my, I. They can't be fully decoded through phonics alone because many don't follow regular phonetic rules. So children learn to internalise them through repetition and exposure. The list grows as the child moves through reading stages.
Her teaher asked the parents: to read them fluently to Jin, help her practise spelling them, and gently point out the tricky parts — the sounds within a word that don't behave the way you'd expect.

Speed Words

If Heart Words are about instant recognition, Speed Words are about fluency — reading a whole list smoothly, without pausing to work each one out. Each stage comes with a short list.
Her teaher asked the parents: to help her read the whole list confidently, then to try backwards and in random order.

While I was writing this, Jin wandered over and quietly read through her own book. She pointed at the sound cards — Milo the Monkey, Sally the Snake — and said each one aloud without being asked.

During the holidays, I downloaded each alphabet character from the Little Learners Love Literacy website and made them into palm-sized magnet cards. I stuck them on the partition by the stairs — the spot where Jin plays most. She'll wander over when she's bored, and I'll hear her muttering to herself: mmm Milo, Pittsa Penguin (she can't quite manage Peter the Penguin yet). That's how her language grows — a little every day.

We'll read through the next stage of Heart Words and Speed Words together once or twice — not to get ahead, just so she can answer confidently when her teacher asks. So she can raise her hand the way her friends do.

It's not about being first. It's about not feeling left behind.