📚✨When They Finish First… What Do You Give Them Next?

Hi all! ❤️

August is finished, and many of you are already getting ready to plan lessons that will meet the needs of your dear pupils.

In all of this, differentiation is a cornerstone of good teaching. And while we are usually very good at reducing, adapting or scaffolding the workload for children who struggle, we sometimes forget about those who learn quickly, finish early and are hungry for more.

You know that child.

The one who always finishes first, but whose reading level is still not quite strong enough to pick up a little book independently or follow lengthy, complex instructions without your help.

So what happens?

You give them another task. Then another. And before long, you find yourself spending precious time explaining something new to the child who has already finished, while the rest of the class is still working and needs your attention.

This is exactly where these phonics activity books come in.

They are designed to complement, not replace, your phonics lessons. The activity books come into play after each new group of sounds has been explicitly taught in class, providing children with meaningful opportunities to consolidate, review and practise what they have already learned.

They are particularly valuable for those children who are ready to work more independently, yet are not quite ready to access traditional reading materials on their own.

The activities are engaging, hands-on and carefully structured around the phonics children already know. The instructions are accessible, so children can understand what to do without needing you to sit beside them and explain every step.

That means purposeful practice for them—and more teaching time for you.

Because differentiation isn't only about giving less to the children who need support.

Sometimes, it's about making sure the children who are ready to move ahead have somewhere meaningful to go.

And because, let's be honest, being a fast finisher shouldn't mean sitting there waiting for the teacher. ❤️

So… I'm incredibly excited to finally share a project I've poured my heart into:

Read, Find, Colour & Count! ❤️

✨ A phonics activity series designed to make independent practice meaningful, accessible and fun.

Each booklet is designed to be used after a new group of sounds has been explicitly taught, giving children the opportunity to consolidate what they already know while developing confidence in decoding.

Another feature I carefully considered is the format of each booklet.

Every page has been designed so that children can successfully complete the activities, regardless of their confidence level. I strongly believe that experiencing success is essential for building motivation and self-esteem.

When children finish a page thinking “I can do this!”, they become more willing to keep learning and to tackle new challenges with confidence.

Each booklet offers four engaging learning experiences:

📖 Read – Read simple phonics words and develop decoding skills.

🔍 Find – Search for the target word among many others, strengthening visual discrimination, concentration and word recognition.

🎨 Colour – Turn every page into a relaxing colouring activity while reinforcing learning and developing fine motor skills.

🔢 Count – Count the matching pictures, combining early literacy with numeracy practice.

AND... GAMES! of course😁

🌀 Mazes
🧠 Memory
🐍 Snakes & Ladders
4️⃣ 4 in a Row
👏 Snap
🐟 Go Fish...

The books are photocopiable, making them perfect for classroom use, literacy centres, homework, independent practice, intervention groups, early finishers or homeschooling.

👧👦 They are especially suitable for children in the final year of kindergarten and Year 1 / Grade 1 who are beginning their reading journey.

🎁 And I have a little gift for you!

The first booklet in the series is available FREE as a PDF when you subscribe to the Miss Lucy's Teaching Fun newsletter.

It's my little way of saying thank you for joining this wonderful community of teachers and parents. ❤️

If you'd rather have the printed version—or explore the rest of the collection—you can find the books on Amazon:

👉 Read, Find, Colour and Count SATPIN

👉 Read, Find, Colour and Count CKEHRMD

or 👉  in my store on Payhip

As an English teacher, I've always believed that teaching children to read through phonics is one of the most practical and useful skills we can equip them with.

When children learn to decode words confidently, they don't just learn to read—they build the foundations to truly master the English language.

This is exactly why I created this series.

My dream is to help bring systematic phonics instruction into ESL classrooms, where this essential part of literacy is still often overlooked in favour of less systematic approaches to early reading.

In my experience, explicit phonics instruction—including the correct pronunciation of each sound—supports every aspect of language learning. It helps children become more confident speakers, more accurate readers and stronger listeners by enabling them to connect sounds, letters and meaning.

I truly hope these books help many little learners discover that learning to read can be meaningful, confidence-building… and lots of fun! 💛

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🌟 ¡Learning English doesn’t simply mean filling in the blanks! 🇬🇧✨

Many English as a Second Language (ESL) activities rely solely on “fill-in-the-blank” exercises ✏️… but the real goal should be to help children speak, understand, and use English naturally. 🗣️💬

🎨 Learning by doing makes it much easier, more fun, and more motivating!

And you’ll be surprised at how quickly children can start achieving real results. 🌈🚀

📚 If you’re looking for creative and engaging activities to make English learning more dynamic, check out my online store! 🛍️💕

👉 ESL Children's Worksheets

✨ Learn, play, speak, and grow! ❤️

Time to read - Synthetic Phonics - First Phase

There's a big debate about whether or not children should be taught to read before they are 6. It seems that there's a chance that forcing them to read too early could impair the development of faster connections between the two lobes of their young brains.

Here in Spain, children start reading and writing vowels at the age of 4.
I'm definitely against this rush, and I have my own theory about the reasons why kids are tortured this way, but I'm not here to talk about Spanish education policies today!

Instead, I'm going to tell you what I think might be an intermediate solution to this big dilemma: Synthetic Phonics taught using the Montessori method.


Many of you probably already know the Jolly Phonics method. When I first heard about it, it was being advertised as an innovative way to teach reading and writing, but last summer, reading 'The Discovery of the Child'  written by Maria Montessori and published in 1948 I realized that the use of the Synthetic Phonics method is not new at all; it has just been ignored for decades.

At its simplest, it consists of familiarizing the child with the sounds of the letters by presenting the vowels and consonants separately. However, while the Jolly Phonics method involves written exercises, the Montessori method only requires that kids to first trace the letters with their fingers, and later use a stick to learn the right direction in which a given graphic sign must be drawn, so that the visual and the muscle memory become associated with the letter's sound.

No child even has to pick up a pencil, so with this method, their synapses are safe and children can start to move along the correct path towards reading and writing.

The first phase (which is what I've been experimenting with my class over the last few weeks)  consists of recognizing the first sound of a word. Here you can see a clear example of this exercise.

First you should make Initial Sound Boxes - Each box in the set of 26 contains objects or pictures that start with the letter that box represents. 

Since I haven't got my own classroom (yet) I had to choose the pictures option and  instead of using a little chest of drawers, as Maria Montessori suggests in her book, I'm storing the pictures into envelopes, one for each letter. Of course, it is also possible to use boxes, recycled egg cartons,  and such. Just stick a letter on the outside of each container and you'll have your alternative chest of drawers to group pictures or toys according to the sound of the first letter in their names.

Here you can find the Jolly Phonics chants which will help kids remember each sound.

By presenting single sounds, the Synthetic Phonics method also allows teachers to point out the correct mouth positions needed to produce each sound and to avoid Spanish mispronunciation of English sounds for R, W, V, B etc.

At the moment, we're still on the letter 'M' and it seems that, little by little, the kids are building a certain awareness of the sounds. For example, the other day one of the kids said that the word SNAKE starts with an E. Of course this mistake was due to the fact that he was pronouncing it the Spanish way, which places an E before every word that starts with an S. The good thing was that I could point out the difference and the look on his face showed his surprise and interest in that unexpected information.

Also, recently, they were singing a winter song that goes: Winter! Winter! Winter's very cold!" which they were pronouncing the Spanish way, especially the vowels and the Rs. So I used Synthetic Phonics to teach them how to sing it properly and they did it perfectly. The funny thing is that now they are so aware of the difference between the right and the wrong way to sing it, that when I ask them to sing it, they sing it wrong, on purpose, just to see my horrified expression and make fun of me!
Although I have to admit, I find it kind of cool…!

--> Quiero leer este post en castellano 

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🌟 ¡Learning English doesn’t simply mean filling in the blanks! 🇬🇧✨

Many English as a Second Language (ESL) activities rely solely on “fill-in-the-blank” exercises ✏️… but the real goal should be to help children speak, understand, and use English naturally. 🗣️💬

🎨 Learning by doing makes it much easier, more fun, and more motivating!

And you’ll be surprised at how quickly children can start achieving real results. 🌈🚀

📚 If you’re looking for creative and engaging activities to make English learning more dynamic, check out my online store! 🛍️💕

👉 ESL Children's Worksheets

✨ Learn, play, speak, and grow! ❤️

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📍Do you struggle with a challenging class, where many of your students get distracted and their academic performance doesn’t reflect all the effort you put into preparing and teaching your lessons? 

📍Does this situation frustrate you, and would you like your students to learn more while enjoying the process? 

👉Something similar happened to me during my elementary teaching internship, and in my latest book, Pygmalion in the Classroom: A Real Experience—based on my senior thesis and my internship at a primary school in Madrid—I’ll tell you how we managed to turn things around and achieve resounding success! 

Don’t miss it! 

Available in digital and print formats on Amazon in every country, and on the major e-book platforms.