2.5 year old learning how to read aurally

[ellemenope]

I guess DD is a strong aural learner, (which perplexes me because I know I am wholly visual learner. I could write a novel about a how visual I am.)

She thrives on rote memorization. It is hard to describe, but when she discovers something that can be easily memorized in order, forget about it. We have gone through the alphabet, rote counting, planets, days of the week, months of the year, presidents, and states, etc. In each case, she just requests that it be repeated over and over until she is able to mouth along with me. She also memorizes long passages from books, especially books on tape. And I feel she had applied this swagger to reading.

Reading is really important to her. She wants to know how, but she’d rather keep it entirely conversational I think. She knows her phonics like the back of her hand, can recite the majority of the consonant and vowel digraphs in the English language, understands that some words just have to be memorized and does this. She never had trouble with consonant blends. She can explain how “silent e” works. (All of this with very little instruction or repetition, but she loves talking about this stuff.) She can also effortlessly break down a word into phonemes. She is in a phase right now where she seems to feel the need to do this with many words she hears. “Easter basket” becomes

/ee/-/s/-/t/-/er/- /b/-/a/-/s/-/k/-/e/-/t/.

She can also do the reverse of this easily. How odd is it that she gets basket out of me saying each letter sound? Or, a word like pink? To me /p/-/i/-/n/-/k/ sounds nothing like pink. It sounds like puhinnakuh. I even try to pause for seconds between sounds. She gets it effortlessly. Is this normal for an aural learner?

The most difficult thing for her to do in regards to reading is keeping her eyes on the page. I have been gently reminding her to actually look at the words.  But, for the most part I have been catering to her style. I will read to her, point out an interesting word, ask her about a rule, and crudely sound out the word for her.

Me: Oh, here is a good word. What does SH say?

DD: /sh/

Me: OK, then we have /a/-/m/-/p/ and then double o.

DD: Shampoo. *without ever having looked at the page*

When she focuses on looking at the words, she is fine.  Her reading lines up with her aural reading skills.  She read her first sentence last week without me keeping her on track with my finger. But, most of the time it feels way too laborious for me to keep her focused. Is this just how a non-visual person starts off? I remember learning how to read. I wanted to stare at the letters and words for hours to figure it out. She seems to have it all figured out, but won’t look at the words. Is it an age thing, her learning style, or a vision problem?

I am actually thrilled and astounded with her progress. I am really proud of her enthusiasm and resolve to learn to read. If I leave her to her own devices, which I do for the most part, she happily keeps everything oral/aural, and picks out single words here and there. She picked up a newspaper in the car the other day and started sounding out words, even commented about some /ee/’s she found and a /ch/. She can also find any word on a page that I ask, and she enjoys making word lists on my laptop to print out and hang up around the house to read.

So, what is this? Has anyone else gone through this? Is this as weird as I think it is? Or, is this just foreign to me because I am so visual? Am I doing this right?  I am a bit worried that us being on opposite ends of the learning style spectrum is causing me to believe she is a genius in my area of weakness and a dunce in my area of strength.  So, I feel like I need another reality check.  Thanks.  Any insight, guidance, or stories would be helpful.

[Roar]

I'm willing to bet she's not a dunce in anything. She's very young. It may well be that she's far more gifted in the visual spatial realm than you can tell right now. It may be at most a "relative weakness" - as in she's HG in that area but PG in others. The kind of memorization stuff you are describing is something we saw with our child who turned out to be PG across the board. I wouldn't have guessed so about the visual spatial stuff because it wasn't as in your face as early for him.

My only advice is let her take the lead, sit back and enjoy the ride. She'll show you where you need to go. I would not prompt her to look at the words.

[physmom]

That's really interesting.  DH is an aural learner (or maybe better put not as visual-spatial as I am ) .  However, he learned to read in a week before he started school because his mom wanted to make sure that he could start K at age 4 rather than having to wait a year (and apparently reading was enough to convince the school).  I'm pretty visual spatial and learned to read more through sight words (much to my English-teacher father's distress! I'm also a horrible speller, which doesn't help things...).  DD seems to be heading down that path.  She's been picking up a lot more sight words lately and has learned to spell a few words but hasn't even made a single attempt at sounding out words.  I'm not sure she even knows any of the letter sounds but can tell me that what letters certain words start with. 

I guess the moral of the story is just to follow their lead now  no matter what crazy path it takes you down.  It's fun to hear the different ways these kids crack the reading code, though!

[pranava]

Originally Posted by ellemenope 

I guess DD is a strong aural learner, (which perplexes me because I know I am wholly visual learner. I could write a novel about a how visual I am.)

Reading is really important to her. She wants to know how, but she’d rather keep it entirely conversational I think. She knows her phonics like the back of her hand, can recite the majority of the consonant and vowel digraphs in the English language, understands that some words just have to be memorized and does this. She never had trouble with consonant blends. She can explain how “silent e” works. (All of this with very little instruction or repetition, but she loves talking about this stuff.) She can also effortlessly break down a word into phonemes. She is in a phase right now where she seems to feel the need to do this with many words she hears. “Easter basket” becomes

/ee/-/s/-/t/-/er/- /b/-/a/-/s/-/k/-/e/-/t/.

She can also do the reverse of this easily. How odd is it that she gets basket out of me saying each letter sound? Or, a word like pink? To me /p/-/i/-/n/-/k/ sounds nothing like pink. It sounds like puhinnakuh. I even try to pause for seconds between sounds. She gets it effortlessly. Is this normal for an aural learner?

The most difficult thing for her to do in regards to reading is keeping her eyes on the page. I have been gently reminding her to actually look at the words.  But, for the most part I have been catering to her style. I will read to her, point out an interesting word, ask her about a rule, and crudely sound out the word for her.

Me: Oh, here is a good word. What does SH say?

DD: /sh/

Me: OK, then we have /a/-/m/-/p/ and then double o.

DD: Shampoo. *without ever having looked at the page*

I've got the same thing going on with DH.  I thought it was a lack of caring or attention to the written words, but maybe he's an aural learner too.  I can spell a word and he can tell me the sound each letter makes and then tell me what the word is.  If I show him the written word, he's just not interested and doesn't want to look at it.  It's not that he doesn't have letter recognition down pat because he knows upper and lower case in whatever font you show him.  I had just chalked it up to age, but I'll have to look more into the aural learning style. 

Curious - Does your DD also love to sing and memorize songs with very little repetition?  DS can learn anything nearly instantly if you put it to song.  And, he never, never, never stops talking!!!!  Cute, but I treasure silence now

[Freeman]

Originally Posted by ellemenope 

She thrives on rote memorization. It is hard to describe, but when she discovers something that can be easily memorized in order, forget about it. We have gone through the alphabet, rote counting, planets, days of the week, months of the year, presidents, and states, etc. In each case, she just requests that it be repeated over and over until she is able to mouth along with me. She also memorizes long passages from books, especially books on tape. And I feel she had applied this swagger to reading.

Reading is really important to her. She wants to know how, but she’d rather keep it entirely conversational I think. She knows her phonics like the back of her hand, can recite the majority of the consonant and vowel digraphs in the English language, understands that some words just have to be memorized and does this. She never had trouble with consonant blends. She can explain how “silent e” works. (All of this with very little instruction or repetition, but she loves talking about this stuff.) She can also effortlessly break down a word into phonemes. She is in a phase right now where she seems to feel the need to do this with many words she hears. “Easter basket” becomes

/ee/-/s/-/t/-/er/- /b/-/a/-/s/-/k/-/e/-/t/.

She can also do the reverse of this easily. How odd is it that she gets basket out of me saying each letter sound? Or, a word like pink? To me /p/-/i/-/n/-/k/ sounds nothing like pink. It sounds like puhinnakuh. I even try to pause for seconds between sounds. She gets it effortlessly. Is this normal for an aural learner?

The most difficult thing for her to do in regards to reading is keeping her eyes on the page. I have been gently reminding her to actually look at the words.  But, for the most part I have been catering to her style. I will read to her, point out an interesting word, ask her about a rule, and crudely sound out the word for her.

Me: Oh, here is a good word. What does SH say?

DD: /sh/

Me: OK, then we have /a/-/m/-/p/ and then double o.

DD: Shampoo. *without ever having looked at the page*

When she focuses on looking at the words, she is fine.  Her reading lines up with her aural reading skills.  She read her first sentence last week without me keeping her on track with my finger. But, most of the time it feels way too laborious for me to keep her focused. Is this just how a non-visual person starts off? I remember learning how to read. I wanted to stare at the letters and words for hours to figure it out. She seems to have it all figured out, but won’t look at the words. Is it an age thing, her learning style, or a vision problem?

I am actually thrilled and astounded with her progress. I am really proud of her enthusiasm and resolve to learn to read. If I leave her to her own devices, which I do for the most part, she happily keeps everything oral/aural, and picks out single words here and there. She picked up a newspaper in the car the other day and started sounding out words, even commented about some /ee/’s she found and a /ch/. She can also find any word on a page that I ask, and she enjoys making word lists on my laptop to print out and hang up around the house to read.

So, what is this? Has anyone else gone through this? Is this as weird as I think it is? Or, is this just foreign to me because I am so visual? Am I doing this right?  I am a bit worried that us being on opposite ends of the learning style spectrum is causing me to believe she is a genius in my area of weakness and a dunce in my area of strength.  So, I feel like I need another reality check.  Thanks.  Any insight, guidance, or stories would be helpful.

It doesn't sound weird to me, but I think my ds is also very aural in a sense. Before he could read, he would have books virtually memorized after the first or second time of hearing them. It seemed pretty uncanny to me. Your dd being able to know the words "basket,"  "pink," and "shampoo" from the sounds of the letters sounds like how my ds sounds out words that he does not know. I actually thought this was more typical than unusual?? I think being able to follow the words on the page comes with age - I am not sure how old your dd is. My ds is also very visual-spatial and mainly interested in creating grand structures out of legos and proceeding through the next levels of his video games. I think he is much more visual-spatial than I am...so being an aural learner does not exclude being a visual-spatial learner, IME.
 

[sapphire_chan]

I suspect part of it is that doing things aurally is both far faster for her and also offers a connection with Mommy.

There is nothing whatsoever the matter with her doing things that way.

That said, she might enjoy a game where she sounds out words for you and you try to guess. E.g. make up some cards with words that interest her and play a game where one person sounds out a word and the other person points out which one. 

[ellemenope]

Oh, thanks everybody.  It is comforting that no one replied that it was weird.  Although, I am not going to lie, it would be nice to hear someone say, "that is exactly how my DC did it."  But, just writing the OP and reading it back really helped me to see what is going on.  I think I am definitely experiencing some frustrations because DD perceives things and thinks in a different way than I do. 

This past week we've been pretty busy.  The weather has been amazing, so we just haven't been home.  I have been letting her do her thing.  She sounded out words from the newspaper, spent a long time pointing out all the digraphs she knew and silent e's and words that ended in y.  She has been taking a lot more stabs at spelling, all aural.  FWIW, she can write letters but they take up about half a page each.  She loves to talk about how she would spell something versus how it is really spelled.  For example, hee instead of he.  She also likes to play around with words.  She will put a silent e at the end of one word and sound it out again and guess if it that is a real word.  (again, this is all aural.)  She will ask about putting an s in f-a-t to make f-a-s-t.  She has foam letter in the bathtub, and she definitely spends close to 30 minutes a day in their with them sounding out words and telling them how they behave.  "when vowel teams go a walking, the first vowel does the talking" kind of stuff.

And...I have just come to learn that I have to prompt her with the first sound of each word to keep her on track when actually reading.  I learned this in the past week.  It goes way smoother than using just my finger to help her track.  It has eased my frustrations so much and sped up the process of her reading immensely. "Look at the word" was not working.  I will admit, I really don't understand it, but I have come to turns that I am just not going to understand everything with her.  So for the sentence,

The frog is in the pond.

DD will read "the" and then just stop and look away.  I will say /f/.  She will immediately look back and say "/f/-/r/-/o/-/g/, frog."  Then she will read "is in the" and stop and look away.  Then I will say /p/, and she will immediately look back and say "/p/-/o/-/n/-/d/, pond."

Pranava- DD is not a singer, but she does memorize many songs and sings along with the radio.  She has many passages from her books memorized.  She talks all day long, to herself, her toys, her imaginary playmates, her only half-listening mom.  She cannot play without talking.  Sometimes she just fills the gaps of silence with words and phrases she likes.  

Your DS sounds a lot like my DD.  I looked up what it is called to blend phonemes into words.  It is called phonemic synthesis, and it requires the ability to distinguish individual phonemes aurally as well as the ability to keep track of their sequence.  That sounds like an auditory-sequential skill to me.  So, A-S kids would have a huge advantage with that.

I found this from google books:

Auditory-sequential skills can be detected from an early age in gifted children.  These gifted children develop language earlier than age peers, and speak in full sentences prior to 18 months of age.  They are often early readers and writers.  Many are good at spelling from the time of preschool years.  Ryan could spell words such as "scythe" at age five, and he had learned to read at age two.  Many of these gifted children enjoy imaginary play and have imaginary playmates.  They enjoy acting out what they have read, and also they will compose new scenarios based on variations of what they have done before.  From and early age, many gifted children with strong auditory-sequential skills engage in argument and debate, especially with their parents.  They want logical reasons why they can and cannot do things.

I don't know that I subscribe to the idea that there are A-S and V-S people strictly speaking, but I have to admit almost every person I know shows a preference for visual/aural, holistic/sequential, inductive/deductive learning.  What I think I need to tell myself is that it is not that DD is unable to learn visually she just prefers to learn aurally, etc.

[joensally]

Does your DD have any vision issues?

DS does (strabismus/convergence insufficiency).  At that age, he was never without a non-fiction book with lots of high visual content in tow and we didn't really know what he did with them as he wasn't reading them - he just poured over them.  But then he was reading huge, highly irregular words if he encountered them in isolation.  He loved verbal word play, but wouldn't "read" in the traditional sense.

[loraxc]

Just curious--can someone explain to me why auditory-sequential learners would be good spellers? That description describes both my DD and me to a T. However, I am a strong speller because I can "see" words, and DD seems to be the same way. I don't get it. (BTW, I would otherwise say that I am weak in visual-spatial skills, and that DD is maybe high average.)

As to how she learned to read--I honestly have no idea. She had phonics down for years before reading clicked. She could also sound out short words for close to two years before she really read. My memory is just blank when it comes to her learning to read. I think it just happened quickly and invisibly, all of a sudden--and not that early (late 4).

[KCMichigan]

Originally Posted by ellemenope 
  What I think I need to tell myself is that it is not that DD is unable to learn visually she just prefers to learn aurally, etc.

I would also explore visual development as well.

Young kids naturally have trouble focusing on close object (far sighted) and it is normal. Most young kiddos are far sighted a bit anyhow- it evens out as they get older and then some become nearsighted (between age 7/8-10ish). Usually mild to moderate far sightedness does not get corrected because it self-corrects and/or changes to near sightedness over time. BUT it could and does make it hard for young kids to focus on small , close objects for extended periods of time. They also may feel eye strain or focusing trouble (look away and then look back to close objects to refocus).

One of my DDs has a stigmatism and was moderately far sighted form 6m to 5 (we see a pedi eye dr)- every year it got better. Every year she got more 'into' fine motor stuff as her ability to attend to it also grow with her physical ability to look at it that long. The stigmatism still bothers her at times and she will rub her eyes or close one eye to focus. We are looking at glasses soon now that her vision has stabilized more the stigmatism can be corrected properly.

She, too, was an auditory learner at a young age and is/was very advanced in language (spoken). She read fluently early ( read story books fluidly and with voice at 3.5), but had short attention for it. She had her 'oral ' phonics a lot faster than she recognized them visually. (at young two-- said /f/ is for flower, mom!). She can read , decode, use, and understand 4th+ vocabulary words. But does not have the eye 'endurance' to do a sustained 2nd grade+ chapter book. So she reads high vocabulary picture books and lots and lots of informational text that she can focus for a few pages/subject and then move on to something else. It is an eye maturity thing for her, honestly.

Her twin is the opposite (not far sightedness, near sightedness, or astigmatism). She read fluently a good 4- 6 months earlier than DD mentioned above, and she actually had visual phonics at about the same time as auditory. She is able to read 2-3rd grade chapter books with small print for sustained amount of times. 

I, too, was 'advanced' as a kiddo. But got bad eye strain (headaches, etc) for a long time and had trouble with handwriting, small print, etc. Eventually (2nd grade) I had prisms put in my glasses (which I already had for nearsightedness) and to this day I still have glasses JUST with prisms (wear contacts daily for nearsightness) for when I do extended reading, otherwise my eyes start to cross and I cant focus on the small print. I read multiple recreational books a week--I simply make sure that I wear my glasses when I curl up for awhile with a good book or am on the computer! I have no trouble with distance vision wearing only contacts.

FWIW- I am a V/S learner and a horrible speller.My DH is auditory and a much better speller. So far  , though one of my DD is a auditory learner and she is not a good speller so far (the DD mentioned above) and her twin is a V/S learner and is already a good speller at 5- but she tends to memorize patterns and deduct spellings (if night ends in -ight- so does fight and tight...etc).

Just a thought.

We do a lot of audio books around here too... and music( THey might be giants have some awesome CDs for kids that are very educational and have fun catchy tunes!) they have been a fabulous addition to to exploring new words and concepts!

BELOW: direct quote on childrens' vision from our eye care providers website:

Nearsightedness (distant objects appear blurry) typically begins between the ages of eight and fifteen but can start earlier. Farsightedness is actually normal in young children and not a problem as long as it is mild. If a child is too farsighted, vision is blurry or the eyes cross when looking closely at things. This is usually apparent around the age of two. Almost everyone has some amount of astigmatism (oval instead of round cornea). Glasses are required only if the astigmatism is strong.

[ellemenope]

She does have strabismus.  This is actually my deep down fear of fears.  She has a very slight and intermittent outward turn of her left eye.  Her vision was checked at her initial appointment (~1 year ago) with her old pediatric ophthalmologist, and I do remember saying that she was mildly far-sighted and that was a good scenario for her.   We have an appointment with our new pediatric ophthalmologist in a little over a month.
 

I am not sure about her fine motor skills.  She has tiny tiny hands (and feet.  She is a size 7.).  She has a lot of trouble with puzzles.  She has a hard time with legos.  Does not enjoy building large block structures like I do.  She can draw shapes and letters but they usually take up the entire piece of paper.  (She actually makes more letters and shapes using the crayons themselves than by putting the crayon on paper.)  So, all of these visual-spatial activities are affected by her fine motor abilities.  But, I would be really surprised if this was all related to fine motor ability or vision for that matter. 

All of the A-S characteristics fit her.  On the V-S side, I would say that she is incredibly attracted to the TV, but she is attracted to media in all forms.  I have also described her as learning things in a very gestalt manner, but those things have all been language related, aural, and in a sequential style, just very quick and with few repetitions.  I think she does have some neat little visual "gifts".  She constantly sees things, usually animate objects, in inanimate objects.  The face in the outlet, the kangaroos in the design on the ceiling fan, the faucet that looks like an elephant truck, crocodile clothespins...

Another way to describe how I feel about all of this is that it seems like she wants to learn to read for the sake of learning to read.  I don't think she cares all that much to sit down and read a book to herself.  That is what I am for!   I keep reminding myself she is not even three feet tall yet.  I am jsut finding this process interesting.  And, I want to make sure I am not missing something, especially with her vision.

[sapphire_chan]

Originally Posted by loraxc 

Just curious--can someone explain to me why auditory-sequential learners would be good spellers? That description describes both my DD and me to a T. However, I am a strong speller because I can "see" words, and DD seems to be the same way. I don't get it. (BTW, I would otherwise say that I am weak in visual-spatial skills, and that DD is maybe high average.)

Well, for phonetically spelled words the reason is obvious, for other words perhaps they're actually sensitive to subtle differences in the pronunciation of different digraphs?

For instance, the aw of our and the aw of awe, could be said slightly differently and still sound like aw--if you have the ears to hear it. If you get in the habit of saying them with that difference, and saying all other aw or ou words the same way, when it comes to spelling them, you aren't choosing between identical phonemes.

Or it could also be just from being very precise with hearing and memory of pronunciation, so that they never have moments of trying to say crocodile over and over to figure out if the second sound is o or i--like happened to me earlier today.

I'm another visual person, and it's fascinating to think of learning things just from words without visualizing what is being said.

[Daffodil]

Originally Posted by sapphire_chan 

Well, for phonetically spelled words the reason is obvious, for other words perhaps they're actually sensitive to subtle differences in the pronunciation of different digraphs?

For instance, the aw of our and the aw of awe, could be said slightly differently and still sound like aw--if you have the ears to hear it. If you get in the habit of saying them with that difference, and saying all other aw or ou words the same way, when it comes to spelling them, you aren't choosing between identical phonemes.

Or it could also be just from being very precise with hearing and memory of pronunciation, so that they never have moments of trying to say crocodile over and over to figure out if the second sound is o or i--like happened to me earlier today.

I'm an A-S type and an excellent speller, but this explanation isn't right for me.  For me, remembering how words are spelled doesn't have much to do with their sounds.  I would never mix up "beet" and "beat," for instance, even though they sound exactly the same to me.  And if I were trying to remember how to spell a word, I would never find myself trying to figure it out by saying it and listening to the sounds. ("Our" and "awe" do have quite different vowel sounds the way I say them, but I imagine my hearing the difference when you don't has more to do with different regional accents than anything else.  I'm curious what kind of accent you have that makes them come out sounding the same.)

When I hear or think of a word, I have a mental "image" of how it's spelled, but it's not exactly a visual image.  Thinking of it feels sort of like a visual experience, but when I pay attention to what's in my mind it turns out not to be all that visual after all.  I have a clear sense of the letters and their order without actually being able to see them clearly.  So I don't think my ability to spell is related to either visual or auditory strength. 

[loraxc]

When I hear or think of a word, I have a mental "image" of how it's spelled, but it's not exactly a visual image. Thinking of it feels sort of like a visual experience, but when I pay attention to what's in my mind it turns out not to be all that visual after all. I have a clear sense of the letters and their order without actually being able to see them clearly. So I don't think my ability to spell is related to either visual or auditory strength.

I have a mental image as well--but maybe you're right and it isn't actually visual. I don't know. I can tell you that once I see a word a few times, I can almost always spell it. If the word is completely unfamiliar, I'm still pretty good, but I can tell I'm drawing on a really different skillset--knowledge of word roots, for instance.

It really makes me crazy to hear words on the radio that I can't figure out how to spell (unusual names or completely foreign words). It's like a bump in my listening experience--something about how I process language makes knowing the spelling important for my comprehension, or something. Sometimes I have to go look it up so it will stop bothering me.

I think she does have some neat little visual "gifts". She constantly sees things, usually animate objects, in inanimate objects. The face in the outlet, the kangaroos in the design on the ceiling fan, the faucet that looks like an elephant truck, crocodile clothespins...

My little auditory girl has always done this, too. Does she see states and countries, too? DD was famous for this at 2 or 3. "This Christmas tree looks like Uruguay." (Or was it Paraguay?)

She has a hard time with legos. Does not enjoy building large block structures like I do. She can draw shapes and letters but they usually take up the entire piece of paper.

Do you mean tiny Legos or Duplos? I think it's unusual for a 2yo to be able to manipulate small Legos. Drawing letters at all is also advanced for the age. FWIW, my DD did not have advanced fine motor skills as a young toddler, but now they are incredible. DS is much more advanced than she was at this age--he has held a pencil correctly since before 2.

[LynnS6]

Before you head too far down the road of worry about visual processing, I would gently remind you that she's two and a half. Developmentally speaking most 2 1/2 year olds don't have a strong ability to focus on things like print and maintain their focus. Being able to track and maintain your eyes along the line of print requires a fair amount of eye strength and coordination. Now, given her strabismus, she might indeed have visual processing issues, but I suspect it's easier for a lot of 2 year olds to do things aurally rather than visually when it comes to this kind of detail. You might see how she does with large print things too, as that helps young learners.

[Tigerle]

Originally Posted by loraxc 


My little auditory girl has always done this, too. Does she see states and countries, too? DD was famous for this at 2 or 3. "This Christmas tree looks like Uruguay." (Or was it Paraguay?)

 Uruguay makes sense for a Christmas tree, but Paraguay? If your tree looked like Paraguay that year, someone really ripped you off!

[Roar]

Originally Posted by LynnS6 

Before you head too far down the road of worry about visual processing, I would gently remind you that she's two and a half. Developmentally speaking most 2 1/2 year olds don't have a strong ability to focus on things like print and maintain their focus. Being able to track and maintain your eyes along the line of print requires a fair amount of eye strength and coordination. Now, given her strabismus, she might indeed have visual processing issues, but I suspect it's easier for a lot of 2 year olds to do things aurally rather than visually when it comes to this kind of detail. You might see how she does with large print things too, as that helps young learners.

Agreed. I'm wondering what would happen if you let go of following the words with your finger and asking her to read. I'd just let that go and give her time to develop.

[loraxc]

Yes, it was Uruguay. What it actually resembled was an Xmas tree-shaped cookie cutter we have.

I had to go check. Unlike my daughter, I do not know the shape of Uruguay off the top of my head. (Actually, I sincerely doubt she still knows it; her world map poster fell apart and we never replaced it. However, she did have a 50 states placemat for a while in K, leading to her developing some fame as the kindergartener who could ID all the states.)

[moominmamma]

I think at age two all bets are off for learning style. Kids are developmentally hard-wired to be maximally tuned to aural things at that age because that's when they're learning aural and oral language. I think that kids who start to learn to read this early, while still in the midst of the developmental window for language learning, will show a much stronger predilection for aural learning than their later learning preference might demonstrate. My two earliest readers, who were reading at age three, took a strongly phonetic approach at age two to three, but one is quite visual now, while the other is fairly evenly balanced between aural and visual. I teach violin to young kids starting at about age 4 (sometimes a bit younger) and they all start out much more aural in their learning than they end up by age 6 or 8.

Miranda

[ellemenope]

Originally Posted by loraxc 

I think she does have some neat little visual "gifts". She constantly sees things, usually animate objects, in inanimate objects. The face in the outlet, the kangaroos in the design on the ceiling fan, the faucet that looks like an elephant truck, crocodile clothespins...

My little auditory girl has always done this, too. Does she see states and countries, too? DD was famous for this at 2 or 3. "This Christmas tree looks like Uruguay." (Or was it Paraguay?)

 

Not really.  She went through a phase where she labeled certain street corners with state names.  "Oh, look.  It is New York."  Although, she was consistent, I don't think she was seeing the state's shapes.  We just put up a world map a couple of weeks ago.  I would never have imagined her taking to counties.  I always thought they were way to many to memorize.  But, she doesn't seem to get the overwhelming feeling I get.  She just takes it continent by continent.  She is learning the countries the opposite way she learned the continents and states.  With those she learned the names first before ever seeing their image.  With the states she new all their names, then leaned them in alphabetical order, then leaned their location, (and she is not 100% with that, nor does she care too much about it.  She actually first started sounding out words by using that to help her identify her state puzzle pieces.)  With the countries, she is learning their location, shape, and color first.  I can tell she does all this because she rarely makes a mistake, but one was labeling Belize as Taiwan.  I was so surprised by that mistake it made me check.  Turns out, they are both tiny yellow countries on the coast.  They have almost the exact same shape and size, although they are on opposites side of the world.
 

Originally Posted by Roar 

Agreed. I'm wondering what would happen if you let go of following the words with your finger and asking her to read. I'd just let that go and give her time to develop.

What I think would happen would be that she would not care.  She never asks to read.  She asks to learn how to read.  So, I guess I should keep using words in isolation to teach her new concepts/rules/digraphs.  This is definitely what she demands.  She would also want me to converse with her about this stuff all. the. time.  This is her number one interest right now, countries being a close number two, but I think because countries are more of a visual activity, she does not want to talk about them as much as she did the states/continents or reading.

I guess I could help her find another hobby to help divert her from wanting to talk about reading. I have been waiting for the leaves to grow back.  She is obsessed with leaves. (I don't know that obsessed is strong enough a word for her interest in leaves and rocks, but we seem to have exhausted crystals and rocks ATM.)  I even bought a field guide for our state.  She is practically foaming at the mouth to get at it, but I wanted to wait for real leaves to grow out so she could learn them in a more hands on way.  She is a toddler.  I want her to learn through play.  Also, I will say that as the weather gets better we are just not inside, so there has been less actual reading going on and more climbing, running, and digging in the earth.  She did learn many of the rules of baseball at a game the other day.

Oh, and I just got a bird feeder for her playroom window.  That might spark an interest in birding. 

I do feel like I am always looking for fuel to feed my little monster.  My sister complains that she cannot for the life of her teach her two-year-old her colors.  I can never seem to acquire enough information for my DD to gobble up.  I am not complaining.  I love my smart little girl.  I just don't know how to be normal.  Gifted are not, I am thankful for this forum.

And, I am trying not to worry about her vision until the doctor says to.