The guide we wish we'd had

Why it exists

Many parents weren't taught to read this way. Then a sheet comes home in the book bag asking you to practise "phonemes and graphemes", and it's not obvious what that means, or how to say the sounds the way school does.

Free help exists, from schools and from the phonics programmes themselves. What's often missing is a steady series that follows the school term and explains it to you, the grown-up, in a few minutes at a time. That's what we make.

Who it's for

Parents, carers and grandparents of children aged roughly 3 to 7, from Nursery to Year 2. Our videos and guides talk to you, not to your child. Watch first, then use what you've learnt at the kitchen table. The printables are the part made for little hands.

How the videos are made

Our videos are faceless: you see letters, mouth diagrams and example words rather than a presenter. The narration is an AI-generated British voice, and we say so in every video description.

Pure sounds are easy to get wrong, so we generate each sound many times, keep only clean takes, check each one slowly, and test that the sounds blend into real words before anything is published.

How we keep it accurate

• We follow the order many English schools use to teach systematic synthetic phonics.
• Programmes differ a little, so we always say: your school's order may differ, and school wins.
• For anything official, such as the Year 1 Phonics Screening Check, we check against GOV.UK and link to it.
• All our pictures, wording and printables are our own.

Phonics Unpacked is independent and not affiliated with any phonics programme, school or government body.

Spotted a mistake?

Please tell us. Teachers and parents have sharp ears, and we'd rather fix something quickly than leave it wrong. The easiest way to reach us is a comment on any of our YouTube videos.