Mothering Forum banner

Need idea's for teaching dd to read

431 Views 18 Replies 14 Participants Last post by  Kindermama
My little stinker is finally showing interest in books. She wants to learn how to read but I'm obviously missing something. She knows her letters well and knows the sounds they make but cant seem to sound them out and combine them. I bought the first level Bob Books a while back and while she likes them she doesn't seem to "get it". What am I missing?
1 - 19 of 19 Posts
Abi started reading and made that connection when I was reading her favorite books over and over again. She had them memorized at that point. I picked a familiar word and pointed to it every time it was used in the book. One that comes to mind is the book Go Dog, Go! I used the word dog because it's familiar. About halfway through the book I pointed to it and she would say "dog" before I could say it. Then I sounded it out for her, one letter at a time. Something clicked and she was reading Bob books a week later.
I used the book "Teach your child to read in 100 easy lessons" We got to lesson 85 and she took off from there. She was 4 at the time.

We also did easy readers from Sonlight curriculum - I Can Read It - or something like that.

I hope that helps - sometimes it takes a while for the things to click.

Cara
See less See more
Quote:

Originally Posted by clairegrace
I used the book "Teach your child to read in 100 easy lessons" We got to lesson 85 and she took off from there. She was 4 at the time.
We did this, too. I skipped the lessons and she just read the stories- it has the "sh" written connected just enough similar little tricks to make the reading easy.
Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons is based on thedistar method which is very much rooted in behaviorist theories, which is fine if you are into that sort of thing. :LOL
I really highly recommend Teach a Child to Read with Children's Books
It is a great combination of phonics and whole language, uses real books, and incorporates writing .

Also, have you seen Starfall.com? It rocks.
At this age with my daughter, we played games that didn't rely too much on books. Two ideas:

*Post-it notes. Write simple three-letter, phonetic words (preferably lower-case) on post-its for items in your house. I.e. rug, cup, box, etc etc. Let her watch you writing the word. If she needs help sounding out each letter, then that's cool. Then let her attach the label to the item. They think it's fun. We played a similar game with action words (i.e. sit, jump, grin), written on pieces of paper and folded, put into a hat.

*fridge magnets. We have a set of fridge magnets and I would write silly, rhyming words on the fridge every morning as a surprise. pig wig. van man. once again, it makes a lot of sense to use lower-case letters.

It sounds like if your daughter is stuck at the putting-it-together stage that tends to come before the sounding it out stage...you can also play this game with her where you say that you're going to take a word apart (verbally) and then put it back together again. Then take words apart and see if she can put them together. M-A-N which would sound like /M/.../A/.../N/ (not "muh" -ah- nuh). She might be confusing the sound of the letter with the sound we often use to denote them (i.e. "b" is technically the sound /b/ not "buh"), making no sense later - i.e. muh-ah-nuh is harder to put together. But taking words apart and putting them back together (verbally, then mentally) is a huge memory hurdle (remembering the sounds, the order they came in). She's almost over it, sounds like.

You can take a pretend trip to the zoo this way, and work up to larger words that are still fairly phonetic.../z/-/e/-/b/-/r/-/a/...fun to play in the car and stuff.
See less See more
This is a lot of what is suggested in the book I mentioned. The basic plan goes
1. Child reads a book they know well
2. Child reads a book they are working on.
3. Phonics games.
4. New book
5. Writing a "story" (a sentence)- the child writes and illustrates a sentence built from words leaned

Another phonics game idea is an alphabet puzzle- we like to put it together and then sing the ABC song using sounds rather than letter names,
Quote:

Originally Posted by loraeileen
At this age with my daughter, we played games that didn't rely too much on books. Two ideas:

*Post-it notes. Write simple three-letter, phonetic words (preferably lower-case) on post-its for items in your house. I.e. rug, cup, box, etc etc. Let her watch you writing the word. If she needs help sounding out each letter, then that's cool. Then let her attach the label to the item. They think it's fun. We played a similar game with action words (i.e. sit, jump, grin), written on pieces of paper and folded, put into a hat.
___________________

It sounds like if your daughter is stuck at the putting-it-together stage that tends to come before the sounding it out stage...you can also play this game with her where you say that you're going to take a word apart (verbally) and then put it back together again. Then take words apart and see if she can put them together. M-A-N which would sound like /M/.../A/.../N/ (not "muh" -ah- nuh). She might be confusing the sound of the letter with the sound we often use to denote them (i.e. "b" is technically the sound /b/ not "buh"), making no sense later - i.e. muh-ah-nuh is harder to put together. But taking words apart and putting them back together (verbally, then mentally) is a huge memory hurdle (remembering the sounds, the order they came in). She's almost over it, sounds like.

Michael is stuck and these are awesome suggestions- thank you!
See less See more
Another vote for starfall and lots and lots of reading to her....books she loves, books you love.....
If anyone is interested, I actually taught a class on phonemic awareness for ages 2-6, and I have a handout that goes through the stages and games you can play with them at the different times. From nursery rhyme games to more "advanced" stuff like the post-it game. You can PM me if you're interested, I can send it to you inline text or as an attachment.
Another fun reading activity is to make her own book. Let her draw pictures or use photos you have already and let her put them together into a story and she can write the text. An example might be, if you have pics of a day at the pool. She may write, We went to the pool. I am in the water. I am resting. Mommy like the water. Then she can read and reread it a million times.
Leap Frog has some great videos. My children loved them (we rented them from netflix) and watched them about 10 times before we returned them.
Hey, we tried the "taking words apart" game while walking home from the library today. He did great, and we had fun- thank you!
At 4yo, she might just not be ready, but I really like the Peggy Kaye books for reading and writing games. Have fun!

(Also, just started using Explode the Code books with my 7yo and it's really helpful.)
She might be just too little. I agree with Starfall but also down loading study dog. www.studydog.com

I also like Phonics Pathways.
I downloaded StudyDog and I am going to look at it more closely while my kids are napping. It looks interesting!

Namaste!
I bought http://www.readinglesson.com with the DVD of letter sounds & the cd-roms....Kaya's reading took off right away but I noticed I was "pushing" her and I took a step back and she didn't ask for the lessons again. She did learn all the letter sounds and is now able to read what she wants to read...I'm planning on introducing her to it again this summer.
1 - 19 of 19 Posts
This is an older thread, you may not receive a response, and could be reviving an old thread. Please consider creating a new thread.
Top