notice first.
The Notice Method shows you what to do in the moment your child says or writes something that isn't quite right, and how to turn that moment into your next small lesson.
“No, sayang, it's this.”
Your child says something that isn't quite right. A word comes out wrong, a spelling looks strange, a sentence gets tangled halfway through. And your first instinct, like almost every mum's, is to fix it.
That instinct isn't wrong. It comes from caring. But correcting is only one of the ways your child learns. There's a step that comes before it.
a correction fixes today's mistake.
the four building blocks.
Language isn't one big skill. It's built in layers. Once you can see those layers, your child's mistakes start to look very different. When they get something “wrong”, it's almost never random.
Sounds
Can your child hear the sounds inside a word, pull them apart, and put them back together?
“bear and bottle rhyme!”
Symbols
English doesn't have a neat one-sound, one-letter system. She heard the sound correctly and picked a reasonable symbol for it.
creem cream
Words
What words mean, and how they change: -ed for the past, -s for more than one.
mouses mice
Sentences
Children don't learn grammar from rules first. They absorb it from everything they hear around them.
Today I go to the Mr Bean.
these blocks don't grow one at a time. that's why their mistakes tell you so much.
which block is it?
Four real mix-ups from Part 2 of the guide. You don't need to sort perfectly. Some sit between two blocks, and that's fine.
catch. check. find. talk.
Catch it.
Your child meets language all day: in what they hear, in the books you read together, in the words and patterns they try out. Noticing is your part. It means paying closer attention to what they say and write as they meet it.
- Chatting at meals and in the car
- Retelling a story, or during read-aloud
- Notes, lists, labels in pretend play
- Captions on their drawings
Check it.
If it's right, validate it, so what they worked out on their own becomes something they know. If it's not quite right: correct, wait, or ask. Is it one thing, or might it be a pattern?
Find it.
Tab three or four real examples in a book you both know. A familiar book works best, because they've already heard those sentences.
Talk it through.
Ask one question that points at the pattern, and let them answer. Then say what the pattern does in one plain sentence. No grammar term yet.
“The e at the end is quiet. It makes the i say its name.”
teach the stage they're standing in.
Most workbooks start at “name”. They hand a child a rule before she's ever met the pattern it describes. The roadmap covers Notice in full, and one first step into Practise.
Notice
You notice your child meeting a pattern, then help her see what it does.
Practise
She works through real examples, with support, before doing it alone.
Name
The pattern gets its grammar term, once she already knows what it does.
Produce
She uses it correctly, unprompted, in something new she's writing.
five weeks to make it a habit.
One small step a week, the guide, four printables, WhatsApp check-ins and a live Q&A in week 5.