Learning to Read

[BrownSugaMama]

How do you teach a child to read? My dd is 3 and asks me to tell her what some words say, she likes to pronounce words and guess which letter it begins with - so I believe she is showing an interest and I would like to encourage her. I try to read to her at least once a day but some days it doesn't happen. any suggestions? TIA!

[moominmamma]

At this age, that's all there is to it... what she's doing, and how you're responding. Kids who are destined to be early readers, who are developmentally ready to figure out reading, do so with nothing more than the sorts of guesses, questions and exposure that you've described. I've got three kids who learned read fluently that way, two of them at age 4.

Miranda

[Cajunmomma]

If she wants to learn, I would get one of those big alphabet sets, the ones that make a floor mat. My kids would use them to learn the letters, then the letter sounds, then have to name words that started with those letters.

I have homeschooled 3, and never had one learn to read without phonics. I wish that I had known how to do it--or how to encourage it--I really envy you, moominmamma.

[fourgrtkidos]

The three old enough to read used BOB books.

I love 'em.
Michelle

[Aura_Kitten]

i've been telling my son (4.5 y.o. now) about letters, the names of letters, and the sounds they make since he was a baby... we started working more frequently on phonics (letter sounds and the sounds letter combinations make) about 6 months (? maybe a year?) ago. we read constantly ~ at least every night at bedtime, and i try to have "story time" (sit down and read 5-10 books and discuss them) at least a few times a week.

a month or so ago he read his first word by himself ~ he was flipping through the Best Kid's Cookbook and read the word "H-O-T."

since then he's had a reading explosion ~ wanting to read EVERYTHING by himself, wanting me to tell him what words are what and sound them out with him, wanting to sound things out himself... just really diving into it. he's picking up more reading skills every day now.

so... that's our approach. just kind of a -- give-the-kids-the-tools-and-let-him-go-at-it approach.

we also have some "phonics cards" that i picked up at the drugstore ~ they're just basically alphabet cards, but geared toward phonics, so like, the "A" cards ~ one has an "acorn" and one has an "apple" to show the different sounds the letter "a" makes, then on the back there are more examles of words... "gate," "cat," etc. we go through them together, and i help him pay attention to the different sounds that the letters make, and the combinations etc. we talk about letter sounds while we're out shopping or at the park... like i'll say, "you're swinging! oh hey michael, what letters do you hear in the word 'swing'?" and then he goes through, "i hear... s... 'ssss'... and 'wha wha' -- that's w!" ... and so on.

practice practice practice. make books available. read constantly. i take michael to the library a lot, and check books out for him from the college library, but i've also always made sure he's had his own books to read and look through... which i think is a huge thing for kids too.

[moominmamma]

Originally Posted by Cajunmomma

I have homeschooled 3, and never had one learn to read without phonics. I wish that I had known how to do it--or how to encourage it--I really envy you, moominmamma.

I didn't say my kids learned to read without phonics, unless by "without phonics" you mean "without systematic teaching of phonics". My kids, as it sounds like BrownSugaMama's dd is beginning to do, teased about the phonetic code through questions, guesses, and intuition. They loved letters and figured out very early that they represented phonemes, and did a lot of guessing and playing around with initial and terminal consonants. After they got the simpler letter sounds down, they refined their understanding of phonetic rules by deductive reasoning and intuition, using what they knew to figure out new things. I didn't teach them that a C followed by an E is a soft C, but I clearly recall my son reading the label on a spring water bottle and telling me that he'd figured out that I-C-E must say eye-ss not eye-k, because eye-k didn't make any sense, and so an E at the end of a word seemed to do two things, make a vowel long, and make a C soft.

Miranda

[BrownSugaMama]

Thanks so much for the help ladies! Glad to hear that I'm on the right track to helping her as much as I can. I have even written common words i.e the, and, his, her on index cards. We haven't actually done anything with them but when I see the same word repeated often I take time with it and have her spell it and sound it out.