The English Language

I've always known it to be completely confusing and wondered how people every manage to learn it. It has become more apparent recently though.

Since entering year 1, J has been getting spellings weekly and most of them are words you just have to know. I can't explain why they are spelt the way they are. Those phonics they teach feel useless too, as half of the words can't be sounded out.

The past couple of weeks have been particularly confusing.

Last few weeks we have had words such as; coin, join, foil and soil. I explained to him this is an OI sound and which letters to use. This week he has got Toy, Boy etc. and when I asked him to spell them he wrote 'boiy' 'toiy', so remember what he had previously learnt about the sound. Only for me to confuse matters by explaining its the same sound but different letters.

Other examples are:

Made, paid, stay. They all have the A sound but are spelt differently. How is a five year old meant to get their heads around that? How did we ever get ours around it? I sometimes wonder how we just know how to spell such words.

Does anyone have any tips on how I can help him understand? I'm finding it incredibly hard to help him in a way he can understand. I know that he does the test and the words are gone from his mind almost instantly as he is so intent on learning the next batch.

Year 1 homework and it's already causing me stress, what will it be like next year when I have two of them coming out with homework.