Fat cat eats Hen' pens while the shark's in the park! (Phonics Readers: Hen's Pens - Phil Roxbee Cox)

Name: kingfisher111

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Product:	Phonics Readers: Hen's Pens - Phil Roxbee Cox
Date:	04/09/07 (160 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: helpful early readers

Disadvantages: need more parental guidance

There has been a lot in the news over the last couple of years about the best ways to teach reading, and it seems that we are always hearing about phonics, and particularly the need for schools to teach synthetic phonics. As my daughter is now four, but won't be starting school until next Easter due to the staggered entry system that operates in our area, I am quite keen to try to start reading books with her that will support her phonics.

First of all, a little background about phonics. One definition is that it is a method of teaching beginning readers to read and pronounce words by learning the sound of letters, letter groups and syllables. Children learn to read and write by recongnising the sounds which letters represent and blending these together in order to read, or segmenting the sounds in order to spell and write!

I had this in mind when I was browsing various websites looking for some books to read with my daughter. I came across a set of Usborne Phonic Readers on The Book People website where I could buy a boxed set of twelve for £9.99! As the books normally sell for £4.99 I thought this was a great buy so I set about ordering them.

A few days later the books arrived. They do come as a very attractive boxed set and all have very interesting titles. These include Ted's Shed, Mouse moves House and, my daughter's favourite, Shark in the Park! You can tell from the titles that all these books are going to be fun as well as very strong on rhyme, which is a very good start for developing phonic awareness. Also my daughter really loves discovering rhyming patterns, so I knew these books would appeal to her! However, even though my suggested product for review was the whole set of books, Dooyoo seem to have singled out one particular title - Hen's Pens - so I shall now concentrate on that one.

Hen's Pens is written by Phil Roxbee Cox and is wonderfully illustrated by Stephen Cartwright. The book follows a very simple story which tells of a hen who has a set of ten new pens. She decides that she is going to draw lots of things with her pens but what she likes to draw most is zig zag patterns. She draws lots of zig zags over all her paper until it runs out and she wonders what else she can draw her patterns on. A cow suggests that she draws on her eggs, which she does, but then she ends up drawing on all the eggs which causes a terrible mix up in the barn! It is a very simple story, but there is enough content and humour to keep my little girl's interest!

Another aspect of the book which I like is that some of the pages fold out to reveal more of the story. This is nice for children to be able to interact with the book and also for them to guess what they might see. Another fun little thing is that on every page there is a small duck hiding somewhere and the challenge is to find it! My daughter really enjoys this but having read the book a few times, she knows exactly where the ducks are!

I guess that the most important thing about the book is the language used. The words are very simple in their spelling and rely heavily on varying phonic patterns, particularly focusing on the medial vowel sounds. This book uses lots of words using the short 'e' sound such as hen, pen, ten, and best, nest and rest. There are lots of other words that rhyme as well, following other patterns and vowel sounds. My daughter is getting pretty good and recognising these different rhymes and spotting the different letters.

Overall, all the books in the set follow similar patterns and formats. They all have the duck to find and the pages to old out. Also all of the books have lots of lovely bright vivid pictures and lots of characters (who are all animals) turn up in lots of the books, so they all become quite familiar.

On the front of each book there is a sticker that states that it supports synthetic phonics learning, and inside the front cover it tells parents a little about what this meand plus a tiny bit of guidance about how to go about reading the book with their child. I do wish there was a little more of this though maybe suggesting some fun activities.

Also, I have a slight problem because I can't quite work out which order I should read through the books and it seems quite random as to which vowel sounds are really being focused on. There are some simple vowel sounds as in 'fat cat' and 'hen's pens' and others are much more complicated like 'mouse moves house' and 'gooseon the loose'. There are other sounds though that seem to be forgotten! These books are also obviously for children who know most of their consonant sounds but this wasn't evident when I ordered them. Had I realised all this, I don't think I would have bought them formy daughter yet, as I think we probably need some even more basic readers. I will probably put them away in the cupboard for a while, even though she does really enjoy the stories and pictures anyway.

Overall, I think these are good books but there does need to be more guidance about what your child needs to be able to do before reading these, and also more suggestions about how to use them. Also perhaps there need to be some more titles in order to fill some obvious gaps, and a clear order in which to read them. I guess I need to keep looking to see what else is out there, because even though I think these books are good, they are not quite right for us at the moment!

Summary: Fun books for starting reading!