About Fun Fonix

The story behind the Fun Fonix series

I teach ESL in Japan and began making these workbooks for my own students. Most of the students using these materials are older elementary school students and even junior high school students. Since my students are a little older, they can absorb more at a time and don't need as much practice with writing the alphabet. In my lessons, phonics is just a small part of a once-a-week, one-hour lesson, so I can't spend a lot of time on phonics instruction.

Another issue for my students was vocabulary. Words like "sap", or using the same image for "sit" and "sat", make some materials difficult to use with older learners. The Fun Fonix books were designed to solve these issues.

I started with the Intro Book and had a couple of versions. The original had more advanced drawings but the students didn't really take to those - they seemed to prefer the quick doodles I drew on the board. So I swapped out the images and the books were instantly more successful. I continued with Book 1 and Book 2. My students just kept getting older faster than we could get through the books, so I stopped making new books for a while. After requests from teachers and my own desire to complete the series, I eventually made Fun Fonix ABC, Book 3, and Book 4.

The artwork is black and white to save on ink and to allow students to color the images. I generally assign coloring as homework - hoping students will color the images while reviewing what they learned in class. The images are slightly light on purpose to look like the original pencil drawings, though I've darkened them slightly over the years based on feedback from teachers.

Site updates and improvements

The entire Fun Fonix site has been rebuilt from the ground up - fully mobile-responsive with a modern layout, improved navigation, and dedicated landing pages for every workbook, worksheet maker, and game. The worksheet makers have been updated with improved user interfaces and better print output. All clipart is now consolidated and browsable in one place.

All six Fun Fonix workbooks are now available in print on Amazon - cleanly formatted with no watermarks, no URLs, and crisp black-and-white pages ready to print and hand to students. If you've been printing from the PDFs, the print editions are a significant upgrade.

Updated the site to be mobile responsive. Updated the worksheet makers with a new print menu and fixed alignment issues across different browsers. Added two new worksheet templates: spaghetti string matching worksheets and a free writing template.

The future of Fun Fonix

I hope to add at least two more books - Book 5 (r-controlled vowels) and Book 6 (a final comprehensive phonics book). I also hope to add more images for additional categories and phonics rules. If you have suggestions or requests, please send me a message. Other projects tend to take precedence when I don't have a personal need for more materials, but I become a lot more motivated when I hear from teachers and parents who are using the materials - so please let me know what you'd like to see!

Contact

I'm always happy to get feedback, suggestions, or hear stories about how people are using the materials. Please send me any questions or ideas you have for additional resources.

More MES phonics resources

MES Phonics - phonics flashcards, handouts, posters, alphabet activities and more

Tools for Educators - Phonics - more phonics worksheet and game makers