The Oregon Senate Education Committee heard testimony today on a plan to make the state buy every pre-Kindergarten classroom in Oregon a board game. The toy uses phonics to teach children how to read. Phonics, as a system of teaching, has been around for centuries. That's when you only spell out the first few letters of a word and then take an educated guess, using the context of the sentence as a guide. But beginning in the groovy 1970's, phonics started to gain popularity.
Emphasis is placed on the sounds of the letters as opposed to their names.
Many people, like Republican Senator Charles Starr, say a phonics board game is a great way to learn to read. I have bought this for my grandchildren, who have been home schooled. My grandchildren who are in Camaroon, Africa, learned to play this game at three and five years of age, and we saw great success for them. Seeing such success, Starr decided to sponsor a bill that would require the Oregon Department of Education buy the same instructional board game for every approved Oregon pre-Kindergarten. It's a fun thing to do, and it's an activity that we can help them to do at very little cost, and it would truly help them in their early reading success.