teaching reading to 3 1/2 year old?

With a 3 1/2 yr old, I wouldn't use any systematic "program", at least no at this point. You could start by asking her what some owrds are that she wants to know how to read, maybe three of them, and then writing them out neatly and going through them a bit until she can recognize and differentiate between them... and then if she asks for more words the next day, do that with more, and see how it goes. No pressure, lots of success.

Alternately, or even at the same time if one of her words is short and phonetically regular, you can start by discussing the sounds represented (not "made") by different letters, and how you can use the sound/letter connection to figure out new words... so if her word was "cat", for example, you could write those three letters on a piece of paper, describe the sound each represents in that word, and then write an "m" on another piece of paper, swap it for the "c", explain that "m" represents the sound /m/, and then sound out the new word together.

Some 3 1/2 yr olds will be charmed and delighted by these activities, and some will be bored and frustrated, and some will be in the middle. Follow her cues...

Dar

As a former preschool and kindergarten teacher, I agree that it would be better to avoid structured reading programs at this age. I would start by pointing out the words your daughter *already* knows how to read. She might be able to recognize her own name, for example, or the word "stop" on a stop sign, the name of a store or restaurant you frequent, the brand name of her favorite breakfast cereal, etc. You can even cut and paste some of these words from ads or packages, and make a book for your daughter to read. It is exciting for kids to realize that they already do know how to read some words!

Another idea is to label things around the house. If you have a special box for books, label it "books." Make signs indicating where different toys belong on the shelves (assuming they have assigned spots). Your daughter will let you know which words she wants to know.

Have her help you cut pictures of toys, animals, food, etc., from magazines and make books with simple one-word captions. Photos of friends and family members would work, too. The idea is once again to let your child choose the words that matter to her--she will learn much more quickly and enthusiastically this way.

Sing songs, recite rhymes, play with word sounds and patterns, and just generally have fun with language. And of course, keep reading to her and letting her see you read (and write). Have fun together!

With my 3 year old, I have the first 8 letters of the alphabet up and I play a game that gets her to point to the right letter. Does she actually know the letter?..no (she will forget which is which a week later). But it's a game and one that may help as she does understand what letters are (we don't do this that often, outdoor play & crafts are higher on the list).

When my niece was about this age she took a book and insisted on learning how to read by being read the book. But what she really did was memorize the story. Page for page, she'd "read" the book and turn pages right on cue, she was quite proud of herself

I'd say keep on reading to her and use your finger to follow the text and see what she does or asks. Maybe play around with a workbook for pre-schoolers (mine likes to "do school" with a workbook, some of it she acutally seems to understand).

Edit to add.. check out the treasure of "sticky links" above. This one in particular helped me see what homeschool veterans thought about pre-school education. http://www.redshift.com/~bonajo/index.htm

Montessori Read and Write by Lynn Lawrence has lots of lowkey activities for phonemic awareness. These are the type of thing used in the Montessori 3-6 classroom. They'd be great with the average child.

I've "met" online lots of moms of gifted kids. Several of them taught themselves to read around age 3 (both moms and kids -- it seems to run in families). Which is just to point out that you'll get all sorts of answers on "what should I do for my 3yo". It sort of depends on the child. Sometimes when kids ask to learn to read it actually means "lets play around with books" and for other kids it means "I have this high school chemistry text I'm just dying to figure out" (okay, that last is an exaggeration, but you get the point).

As for the book you mentioned, Teach Your Child/100 Easy Lessons, lots of people have used it with great success. A friend who's a public elementary school teacher taught her own children to read with it (they weren't teaching them well at school, I guess, so she used this book). Our public library has it. When dd wanted to learn to read at age 4 I checked it out. Dd despised it so thoroughly that after 2 days of using it she refused to have anything to do with learning to read for another year.

T

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totally off topic, but a BOX FOR BOOKS?!!! Man, that would have to be one humongous box to fit all of my childrens' books in it...

We loved 100 Easy Lessons!

I had heard and read a lot about it - both positive and negative - and decided to give it a try and if ds didn't like it, fine. But he loved it! We did it every morning at the breakfast table, and he always wanted to do it. Sometimes we did half a lesson, sometimes 2, depending on his mood.

I didn't follow the script exactly, I sometimes supplemented with games and flashcards, and we didn't do the handwriting. (We've just begun Handwriting Without Tears.) The lessons are quick, easy and fun. The stories are very silly and are always followed by comprehension questions and an illustration.

My ds and I went through it between December and April. He turned 4 in Dec and is now 41/2. Also, before we even started he knew all his letters and letter sounds pretty well so he was ready for the transition to putting it all together.

Since April I've kept a large stash of easy readers from the library and he reads some every day. His favorite thing to do is to read a page, then I read a page, etc.

His comprehension is excellent, and he reads with proper phrasing an expression. I would estimate his reading at the moment to be at a 2nd grade level. (I'm glad I'm not sending him to Kindergarten a year from now!)

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***Same here. My dd picked up reading pretty much on her own, but we tried _100 EZ..._ and found it to be more like 100 BORING lessons.

On the other hand, I'd also play letter-magnet games. We had one called the CVC (consonant-vowel-consonant) game where I'd put together a CVC combination like "cat" with magnetized letters and then have her choose any consonant to replace the C and then say it, so she would come up with real words like "bat" or "mat," but also with nonwords like "qat" or "zat." Then we'd switch out the last letter, and she'd make words like "can" or "cap," but nonwords like "caq" or "caz." I think it got her very used to the idea of isolated letters equaling specific sounds.

Oh, also, we started working with "Bob Books," by Bobby Lynn Maslow (?). They're at your library in the children's section; just ask the librarian and I swear she'll know what you're talking about. They teach phonics, basically. They start out with very simple stories and simple pictures -- really good for kids because they're not distracted with complex graphics, which can really get in the way. By "simple," I mean REALLY simple, like "Sam sat. Mat sat. Sam sat on Mat." They get progressively more complex as the series goes on, but it was an invaluable introduction to reading.

My dd loved them because they were great "kid-sized" books -- she could hold them in her hand and really have a feeling of accomplishment at having read "a real book." I owe a big debt of gratitude to the Bob Book woman because she did a great deal toward teaching my child to read. Less than two years later, she's eagerly devouring _Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban_, so I guess the Bob Books worked. Hope this helps!

You can vary the methods that you teach reading.

We used 101 Lessons... .

We also labeled things around the house so that there was some sight reading/learning going on.

I took a roll of calculator tape and we made a scroll of the words that he learned every day - we tried to add one a day. It was fun to roll and unroll it everyday!

We did the plaid Macmillan phonics book once in a while since it can get dry.

We made an alphabet book with pictures of my child...for instance, for "X", i took a picture of him at a Xerox machine.

We made a book with just extra photographs of my child and we wrote sentences for each photgraph. It became a book all about HIM, his favorite subject!!

We made another book and cut out pictures from magazines and ads for letters of the alphabet and practiced writing the words...

We went to the library and got books that looked interesting --- my son loved Eric Carle and all of the colorful, beautiful pictures. My other son loved Curious George. My other son loved books about dinosaurs.

I tried to make every process fun and something to look forward to.

Lots of mixed feelings about 100EZ lessons. I guess I should get it and look at it. My library does not have it, nor the Montessori Read and Write. If anyone has copies of these that you would like to sell, PM me. Thanks again for all your comments. It is very helpful to hear everyone's different experiences.