Pre-School and Daycare
ArcticFox
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Learning to read?
ArcticFox
member
DD is 4 in March, and already learning to read. For example, she can read/write her name. Her teacher says she can read all the other kids names (and she has read them out of the context of school, like when she saw the name Sara somewhere else). She also knows how to read/spell a bunch of easy words - no, on, dog, cat, open, up.. etc.
My question is where do I go from here? DD has another 6 months with the 3 year old class, so I'm not sure how much she will learn to write/spell/read. I was looking at the picture reader books but I'm not sure how much that would help her. I'm not going to pressure her, but she is definitely a kid who is smart and likes to be challenged mentally. Any suggestions would be great, thanks!
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Re: Learning to read?
Yes, I agree. Without those phonological skills your child really isn't reading, it's more memorizing. My almost 4 year old son has memorized many books and sight words because I've exposed them to him. One of the earliest signs to show a child is ready to learn to read is rhyming. Work on rhyming with your child. Also, teach letter sounds. I have a cute song I sing with my son and he can tell me most letter sounds now. (You can google letter sound song and probably find one.) Once they know the sounds, they can begin to decode words. That's when they can read.
There are 3 ways to read: read the words, read the pictures, retell the story (basically memorizing). The fact that your child is doing one is great.
As long as your child shows an interest continue. GL! Sounds like she'll be good and ready for kindergarten one day! As a teacher, I appreciate that.
This is somewhat a C&P (from School Age) because I am completely lazy : ) I added some content.
This may be a helpful post (parenting):https://community.thebump.com/cs/ks/forums/thread/44755899.aspxDD was the same with her name and the other children's names in PreK and in 3 yr old daycare. DD started reading just pick up a story one day, albeit an easy one and read it like it was nothing. I hadn't read it to her in ages! She had just turned 5. This is what we did with her:Read to themPoint to the words, teach them that reading goes from L to RTeach them that written words have meaningTeach them letter and letter soundsTeach them the most common blending sounds (th, br, sh, etc)Teach words that rhyme Starfall dot com (educational computer games) & ipad/pod app Iwritewords (We also like our tag). Sight words (DD has learned over 50 site works in KG so far)Once they get reading, we have DD read to us before bed and then we read to her.HTH!
get the early reader books like Bob books or I Can Read books. they are short with short words and gradually increase in "difficulty" . when reading books, point to words to show the order and left to right formation of sentences. at first, when reading I'd ask dd if she could tell me what a random word was, we'd sound it out together. sometimes she got it, sometimes she doesn't. Now, I have her attempt each word and at the end of a sentence, I read it through smoothly (not always, as she's getting better at it now... she read our bedtime story last week! Hop on Pop! it took a long time but she did it!)
starfall.com is great for learning sight words. and then when drawing or playing with the chalkboard... I'll write out words and ask her what they are... usually building up to a sentence.
and just keep the interest in books... read, read, read.
dd will be 5 at the end of the month and reading her early I Can Read books almost 100% on her own now! her reading ability has really exploded in the last few months. it's so exciting!
That's wonderful news! I have been through this with both of my kids. DD learned to read just around the time she turned 4, and DS was closer to 5. Both my kids could read chapter books by the time they were in kindergarten.
From the point where your DD is, I did three things to help move my kids along and keep them challenged:
--taught them the sounds made by each letter so they would have 2 ways of reading: by sight word recognition (the method your DD is using now) and phonetic decoding, for sounding out unfamiliar words.
--once my kids knew all the letters' sounds, I bought them a few easy reader books, starting with the easiest ones with very few words on a page, rhyming text, and lots of clues in the pictures to help with meaning.
--around this time, I switched from reading picture books at bedtime to reading chapter books out loud. I looked for chapter books that had concepts that would be comprehensible to a preschooler. Hearing the more sophisticated sentences and longer passages read out loud helps emergent readers have a better sense of the syntax of language.
Throughout all this, I did face a lot of skepticism from other parents and friends. I actually had another mom (who taught first grade!) say that she would never teach her kid to read before kindergarten, because she didn't want her kids to be bored in school. That just seemed ridiculous to me!
From K through grade 3, not only have my kids never been bored with school, on the contrary they both absolutely LOVE school. They are good students who are admired by their peers for being among the smartest kids in class. I will say that once my DD was in 3rd grade, she did start to become bored, but she got into a very challenging GT magnet program for 4th and 5th, and she once again loves school, as much as an older kid will admit to loving school ;-)!
Anyway, I say that if your DD shows an aptitude and loves learning, then go for it! I've never regretted challenging my kids academically!
Some kids learn to read using memorization or just knowing words. I have kids in my preschool like that... it's amazing.
Another fun idea not related to reading books is putting up labels are your house- like 'door', 'table', 'bed' etc. It will add to her sight word (or memory) list and you can talk about the sounds the letters make to help her figure out the words.
The 'Bob' books are fabulous!! They are really simple and build slowly adding in a sound or two per book.