5 yo dd balks at reading

[StormySar]

I'm wondering how you helped your children learn to read.

My daughter knows her letters and sounds, but has a problem blending the sounds together, identifying the word once she's sounded it out, and then remembering it so she can remember what she just read.

How can I help her overcome this? We're using "The Ordinary Parent's Guide to TEaching Reading" and feel like we've been on the same lesson for quite some time.

How long should I be helping her sound out/blend her sounds? She gets really frusterated without my help, and she's new at this whole sounding out/blending/making words thing but I don't know where I might be doing things for her, rather than helping her.

How did you make the leap from sounds to words, and how long should I help her sound out/blend? When can I expect her to read small words quickly and not have to sound out eat word?

what types of fun games/activities can we use to help refine these skills while still having fun? She keeps asking for games like I do with her preschool brother but I can't really think of anything fun or outside the box for reading, until she has a better grip on it. :-(

[Lillian J]

I'm too sick with a cold/flu to think, but here's a good thread - Learning to Read.

- Lillian

[luvmy2girlz29]

My 6 yr. old dd really likes www.starfall.com.

Korrie

[bobandjess99]

As the linked threads discusses in some detail, with a variety of different theories, philosophies and opinions thrown in, the general consensus is...just wait. and chill, lol. 5 is way too young for many kids to read. In a year or two(or 3), it might be very easy and happen almost without effort, quite naturally.
Starfall is nice, and the Bob books and early readers are fun for some kids. Flash cards work for some kids.
Sight words can be learned one per day. After 10 days or so of that, there are easy readers which can be read entirely, because they only contain about 10 words.
We like the jump start and reader rabbit computer games, if you do those...preschool or kindergarten level.

[meco]

My child was also a reluctant reader, and he sometimes still is. He did not want to dedicate the time to it--preferring numerous other activities. He slowly is becoming a mostly eager reader. It has taken some time and patience. My son is a kinesthetic learner, and he prefers movement and action. So he builds words out of things like legos, sticks, letter tiles, pretzels, blocks, word cards. And likes to make letters with his body and sky-write words. I gear at-home reading to more hands-on activities.

We also play games with words and letters while out and about--like I Spy, pick out a few words and search for them, race to find a word. And a lot of subtle practice in day to day life--practice reading menus, maps and signs, like at our train stop or at the store.

Finding something that motivates might be useful as well. There might be something your child is interested in or passionate about that would provide a reason to try to read. I think practice also helps--building confidence and becoming more familiar with words.

[meetoo]

there are quite a few computer games. Starfall.com, readingeggs.com, http://www.literactive.com, jumpstart and reader rabbit games can be purchased in the store. Also my DD like when I make a little scavenger hunt for her to read the clues. Or even just little note. Like "if you can read this note to me you can play on the computer for 20 minutes" LOL. Whatever gets them reading right? I think we are also going to be starting a book worm......

[elizawill]

i agree that 5 isn't anything to worry about honestly. i'll share ideas though just the same, as my daughter really struggled with this stage of learning to read as well. i think it's very normal to struggle with decoding when first learning to read. when my dd was struggling, we slowed down and only focused on identifying the beginning sound in words. "bed" starts with "buh", etc. when she was able to do that with any word, we then focused on very simple word families. i made letter tiles (from cardstock and a sharpie) and i introduce certain sounds as blends. for example, "an" is never A-N...it is always introduced as aaaaannnn. blends are always underlined too. so with word families i would show her an & we'd say it together. then, we would change the beginning sound to create words such as ban, can, dan, fan, man, pan, ran, tan, van, etc.

we did this with other sounds, such as en, it, at, ed, etc. you can google kindergarten word families for more ideas.

i also introduce some sight words, such as "the", a"" & "and", etc. we would play reading bingo (homemade) with letters, blends, word families we had previously covered, and sight words mixed in.

lastly, i'd recommend the talking word factory dvd by leapfrog. it is awesome & teaches exactly what your dd struggles with. my kids found this video very entertaining. hth.

[Momma Aimee]

Games for Reading: Playful Ways to Help Your Child Read by Peggy Kaye

Games With Books: Twenty-eight of the Best Children's books and How to Use Them to Help Your Child Learn-From Preschool to Third Grade by Peggy Kaye


off my wish list

[maplesugar]

One of the nice things about homeschooling is that we don't have to adhere to any sort of arbitrary list of skills they are supposed to have at a given age. Five is really so young. It seems that if she already knows her sounds, etc, she is at a very good place to learn to read soon.

Ds didn't raelly put it all togeter untill age 8, but now at 11 reads way above grade level. I second the starfall reccomendation, also comic books really helped ds develop interest (particularly Garfield).

[tanyalynn]

This past spring, DD started to be able to blend words, and for her, I think it was completely developmental. I don't think I had anything to do with it. It seems a big leap from individual letters to reading actual words, and I think we just had to wait til it was right for her.

Right now, we play readingeggs.com, it's fun, but if it weren't fun, we'd stop (and we did let our subscription lapse for a few months this autumn, it just wasn't an interest for a while). Maybe go onto something completely different, but keep reading really interesting books to her?

[annethcz]

I agree that waiting is the right thing to do. My oldest child sounds a lot like your DD. He struggled to read CVC words at age 5. And although he liked the idea of reading, he just wasn't motivated to work hard. I did the Explode the Code books and we read various books from the library. He liked the ETC books, but he didn't love reading. Until he was about 7.5 and all of a sudden, it just clicked for him. He went from stuggling with easy reader books to reading long chapter books in a period of a couple of months. It truly wasn't anything that I did for him, it was a matter of maturity. Now he is 10 and reading everything in sight.

My just-turned-6yo seems to be following in her big brother's footsteps. Although it's soooo tempting to push the reading, I don't think it would be worth it. I'm leary of doing anything that would make her resistant to reading, and confident that given time, it'll just click for her and she'll suddenly love reading as much as she loves being read to.

[Lillian J]

Originally Posted by bobandjess99

As the linked threads discusses in some detail, with a variety of different theories, philosophies and opinions thrown in, the general consensus is...just wait. and chill, lol. 5 is way too young for many kids to read. In a year or two(or 3), it might be very easy and happen almost without effort, quite naturally.

[Savoir Faire]

Welcome to the club. There's a whole slew of us on here with 5-year-olds in the same boat. It'll make you pull your hair out.

Right now I'm just letting her play around on Starfall.com. We're not sure if we're dealing with a learning difficulty/disability (I hate calling them disabilities) so we're not going to push too much until she is officially tested.

Hopefully, after that, we'll know if we're dealing with a child who doesn't want to learn or who is having troubles.

You could always back off for a bit so you don't make yourself crazy. That's what I finally had to do.

[AAK]

Don't push the reading, but make up games to improve phoneomic awareness. Take "cat" for example and identify the three sounds that make up the word (the "k" sound the "a" sound and the "t" sound). Then change something. In the beginning you might have her change out the first sound. What would happen if we switched the "k" sound for the "h" sound? After she gets good at that you may try to change the second or third sounds.

We have wooded cubes with letters on all the sides (we made them from cheap wooden cubes found at Michaels). Some of the cubes are only vowels. My dd likes to make words with the cubes. The hands on manipulation is great for her. Then, like in the previous example, we will have "cat" spelled with the cubes. My dd will rotate the vowel cube around to each vowel and say the new word (even if it is a nonsense word). Another good thing with the cubes is that we will pull the word apart to pay attention to each sound as we blend it.

Amy

[theretohere]

I think that blending is a really, really tough skill- and it can seem maddening when a kid can sound out all the sounds of a word and not put them together. It will come though, and I don't really think it's easy to pinpoint whether it's development or practice or method- just that it seems to click one day and that's that.

[Lillian J]

Originally Posted by maplesugar

One of the nice things about homeschooling is that we don't have to adhere to any sort of arbitrary list of skills they are supposed to have at a given age. Five is really so young. It seems that if she already knows her sounds, etc, she is at a very good place to learn to read soon.

Ds didn't raelly put it all togeter untill age 8, but now at 11 reads way above grade level. I second the starfall reccomendation, also comic books really helped ds develop interest (particularly Garfield).

Yes! And Calvin & Hobbes comes up a lot in the same way for older children, by the way.

Mine didn't even even begin to learn letters or any reading skills until he was almost 7, and that was only because I needed to quickly get him up to speed with the other children he'd be joining in 1st grade of a new school who would be able to read 3 letter words. It took little time, because he was developmentally ready enough by then, but if I had it to do all over again, I wouldn't have put him in that school, and would not have been concerned about reading skills till he was a little older and more interested. He grew into a very capable and voracious reader and self-motivated learner, even though he was not at all interested in reading on his own during those first few years after he learned.

Generations of children were taught how to read during the 1st grade when they were 6 yrs. old. I'm not saying a child who wants to learn to read should be held back, but just that it's not a worry, especially for homeschoolers, if they're not ready yet - a lot of educators and researchers feel that 5 is just too young for lots of children.

From an article, Crisis in the Kindergarten,

"One of the best descriptions of how literacy develops in children between ages three and eight comes from the Bank Street College of Education in New York, a highly regarded institution for the study of early childhood. The Bank Street guidelines differentiate between three main stages of literacy development from preschool to third grade. In summary, they are:
• May know some letter names and some letter sound associations
• May recognize some words and letters in their environment or in texts; but not again in a different context; they may still be unsure of the concept of “word” or “letter”
• Can write some letters, usually those in their own names
• In writing may reverse some letters, and may use mostly uppercase letters
• May make scribbles or strings of random letters with no spaces; one letter may represent a whole word
• May “read” or attribute meaning to his or her marks; may not be able to “re-read” these marks at a later time.

Emergent readers and writers: pre-kindergarten to first grade;
Early readers: first and second grades; Early fluent/fluent readers: second and third grades.
While the Bank Street guidelines point out that children develop literacy in somewhat different ways and with different timetables, they describe kindergarten children, in general, as being emergent readers and writers rather than early readers. This is very different from today’s prevailing expectations that children will become early readers and writers in kindergarten. The Bank Street approach enables kindergarten children to de- velop a foundation for literacy without straining to meet inappropriate demands."
Other articles:
Another look at what young children should be learning, by Lillian Katz, professor of early childhood education.
Much Too Early!, by David Elkind, professor of child development.

Lillian

[dotnetdiva]

The Leapfrog Letter Factory DVDs helped my girl at 4.5 learn all her sounds and start to blend all at once.

We're also using OPG. To make things fun, I also recommend the books by Peggy Kaye, someone listed them above. To top it off, I've discovered that teaching spelling along with reading has done wonders, but that may just be our situation. Everyone will be different!

[Ravin]

My DD was at that stage for quite a while. We took a hiatus from reading lessons (we'd done HOP preK and she got all her letter sounds down, but couldn't quite get the blending words), then got about a third of the way into 100 Easy Lessons and she got stuck again and needed another break...then we used BOB books and the readers from HOP K, then we hit another block, took another break...this fall (she turned 6 in Oct and we're doing 1st grade) we've used Word Mastery, together with BOB and HOP readers, and she was hitting a wall again with the readers, so we made an agreement to stop the readers and just do Word Mastery, which presents lists of individual words with each new phonics rule, and some worksheets I tie in to what Word Mastery is covering. We'll probably do this for the rest of this year, and go back to readers in the summer when Summer Reading Program time rolls around.

My point is, if she's hit a wall, just give her a break, and maybe review what she's already learned until some more sinks in. Let her watch TV shows like Word World, that one with the reading superhero kids, and Between the Lions, and play computer games like Starfall.com or Schoolzone phonics or whatever, do lots of reading aloud to her, and be patient. It'll come with time.

[dotnetdiva]

Great advice Ravin. We have taken a few long reading breaks (2 months) every now and then and tried other things as well. We're now to the point where she reads to me at night a few small stories and then I read a chapter or two to her.

Which reminds me, keep reading aloud, don't stop once she can read!

[theretohere]

Originally Posted by dotnetdiva

Great advice Ravin. We have taken a few long reading breaks (2 months) every now and then and tried other things as well. We're now to the point where she reads to me at night a few small stories and then I read a chapter or two to her.

Which reminds me, keep reading aloud, don't stop once she can read!

I think that's a really great reminder- reading out loud is such a great way to encourage reading.