How can I help my daughter make the next step to reading?

[Pam_and_Abigail]

My oldest dd is almost 4 1/2 and has been wanting to learn to read for some time. We don't want to push her, but this is something she wants to do, and I feel like she might need a little boost at this stage. She can recognize all her capitals and most lower case letters, and she is right now working on writing words. But it seems to me like recognizing individual letters in print is very different from reading words, and I;m just wondering what we can do to help her make the jump from one activity to the next. She goes to www.starfall.com some of the time, though not as much lately as she had been a few months ago.

[simple living mama]

Best thing to do is just snuggle and read to her a lot. Her eyes will begin to follow your words.

Another suggestion is to fill your house with fantastic picture books and good comics. Get the hardback bound Charlie Brown made in the 50's when he and all the other characters were much younger and really cute. The words are easy and you can work on tackling them together. I say this because my young kids (at my work) are moving forward so fast with their reading since I bought these.

The grocery stores sell those little comic books of Richie Rich and Archie's. Some of those are fun just to look at the pictures and eventually they will want to know the words so bad they will keep asking you and it will start to click.

Make sure you check in to see if it's YOU wanting her to read or if it's HER. I was extremely relaxed with my own kids and did not push but read to them a lot and although it took longer this way I feel it was way worth the wait as they have the reading bug hard! I find them reading on the toilet, in the car, during breakfast, any chance they can. They are 8 and 10.

[RedWine]

I used Teach Your Child to Read in 100 EZ lessons when she was at the beginning of the sight word phase. It worked well for us. If you use it though, take the directions with a grain of salt. It will tell you to read out directions exactly as written to the child. I sure didn't. I just followed their model but made it our own at the same time. In any event, it worked very well for dd and she now reads at a late 1st grade/beginning 2nd grade level. We finished 100 EZ a little over a month ago, just after she turned 4.

[A&A]

My 4 1/2 yo. really likes the Clifford Phonics computer game.

[Alana]

My 4.5 yo is doing 100 EZ lessons. He brought it to me one day and said, teach me to read. So we started a lesson, and he wouldnt let me stop till we went to lesson 11 and he could sound out some words. His 6yo brother was rather upsest that his little brother could read before he could. So now my 6yo is dedicated to doing 100EZ lessons so he can read too.
When my 6yo asked my 4.5yo why he learned first..my 4.5yo said "Add, I didnt goof around like you did when mom was doing it with you, you were too wiggly, and I wasnt" :

[minnowmomma]

Try the schoolzone workbooks and cd rom.If she is not ready or not interested in the workbook its still work the money for the cd,my dd is 4 and learning to read and she loves them.They are very colorful and kid friendly and they can work on them without help.

[Pam_and_Abigail]

Alana, that's funny about your kids!


I'm not sure she's ready for anything sturctured like lesson plans or workbooks. We're leaning toward unschooling.
I guess when we guided her through learning letters, little games and activities came up where we helped her learn to recognize the shapes. But there are only 26, and that just doesn't work with words. Just how do you learn to read, anyway? She knows the sounds the letters make, but english is so tricky with rules and exceptions, it must be terribly frustrating. I guess teaching her to sound out words could be the next step?

[Alana]

That is the same route we took.
My 4.5 yo just brought it to me one day and wanted to do it.
I like 100EZ lessons because it is very short, they learn the sounds, but they have symbols with the sounds so the child can see what it is..like for eat it would have e with a line over it, the a would be small and the t normal sized...so the child knows to leave out the a...in further lessons the letters become more normal looking. They have the child say words slowly and then fast, to help them when they start sounding out and blending.

I took my 6yo back a few lessons because he wasnt understanding blending very well, and in a few minutes it clicked.

My 3 yo will now go to the book, point at letters and say the sounds. I asked her if she wanted to do it and she said "No thank you!"

It is just so easy...of course, Im coming from the perspective of someone who spent the past school year in virtual academy hell struggling with my ds daily to do their phonics program which was pointless to both of us.

Now we are just doing a letter of the week, where my boys make a letter page, we find things that start with that letter, they name things with that letter, we look through their dictionary with that letter...etc. And they spend 10 minutes or more if they want doing 100EZ.

I taught myself to read when I was 3. I figured out the letter sounds, somehow realized they were blended together, and took off from there.

[meemee]

my dd is finally showing interest in words. and she is so not the typical structure type. i have not done the phonetic sounds with her but she has experimented and asked me and shown interest in them.

i noticed she likes me spelling out to her. seh will ask me how that spells. or seh will see the starting alphabet on a menu or a juice bottle (never from books) and try to guess at the word. she prefers me spelling out words. instead of saying them. like shall we go out for D I N N E R? or do you want a C A N D Y or an I C E C R E A M. sometimes i forget to spell and she gets mad. if u pass us on the street arguing this is mostly what u would hear 'N O. Y E S. i said N O. please mama please say Y E S.'

[anne+arun]

our dd also showed interest in reading at about 4 yrs... but then lost interest soon afterwards... then got it again... and lost it It helps us to relax as we know homeschooled (unschooled) children who learnt to read at 3yrs but also at 14yrs old. We could see them learning when they were ready.

for me its like when dd learnt to walk. The weeks before it happened she became very frustrated on occasion, she could feel that she was on the brink of something. We did not push or artificially hold her up to practice. When she pulled herself up we were there to support her and we had the furniture at the right height to support her exploration.

I feel similarly with reading. We know she will learn so we just answer her questions when they come and keep reading and reading to her (because she loves that). We have borrowed more "simple" books from the library and to support her interest but found that most jumps in her reading have come from unexpected ways (trying to find the Post Office, writing an email together to her cousin, trying to navigate a dvd interface etc etc..)

For us the guide in such matters is her initiative (questions, requests) and all of our enjoyment... and we are confident that learning will happen

all the best
arun

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| anne + arun |
http://www.theparentingpit.com

[Starflower]

Subbing and :

DD is going to be 4 this summer and LOVES books. She wants to read with us all the time. We're unschooling now because that's just how we live and interact with her. We plan to continue once she reaches kindergarten age.

I'm torn at times on the reading issue only because she seems so interested, but at the same time,I don't want to push her at all. For now, we're just reading a lot of books and sometimes I point at the words as I read them if she seems interested at the time. Sometimes she'll ask what a word is.

Other times we just read and read and read to her. She loves everything from picture books to chapter books like "Charlotte's Web." I think she's very visual so I'm curious to see how she may begin reading when she's ready.

Thanks for starting this thread. It's great to see everyone's suggestions and to hear about how things worked for them.

[minnowmomma]

OK , i bought the click n read program about a month ago(its an online learn to read program) to help my dd learn.She gets most of the answers right but when i go into the room to check on her she always has her head on the desk and she told me that the program makes her tired,I also have not notice much progress in her reading.So for anyone thinking about this program i wouldn't recomend it.

[Just Me]

I second the book Redwine mentioned. My daughter used it and she was reading sentences in under 2 weeks. There is also a website which does free printable sheets for the handwriting parctice from the book.

[PumpkinSeeds]

This is exactly how my first learned/is learning to read. On again, off again.

Originally Posted by anne+arun

our dd also showed interest in reading at about 4 yrs... but then lost interest soon afterwards... then got it again... and lost it

[UUMom]

I hope nobody jumps all over me with this not very RU suggestion, but what about labeling things for her, or playing matching games? My kids used to love to lable our coat cubbies with everyone's name. My youngest used to hang index cards with the pet names on the crate, the fish tanks, the feed bowls etc. (A little messy). It's not quite reading-reading, but pretty soon you learn the word hanging on the crate is the word is Spot... and later it the child notices that the gold fish named Sam both start with "sssss".

A couple of my kids liked word bingo, too. You set up a grid on a piece of paper, and you pop familiar words in each box. (Pet names, Mom, child's name etc) You make two. Then you make a stack of little cards with all those words and get a pile of pennies. You flip the cards one by one and play bingo.

I have one child who loved to have me make lists of everything we were doing that day. At first I made the list, later she had me dicate to her, and later she added her own things. "Make ppcrn. Whach muvee". etc.