I am homeschooling my pre-schooler We are working on reading/pre-reading and basic math skills. My question is how much is teaching necessary and what methods do people prefer. I had a friend kind of chew me out because she said that "teaching" them would screw them up but then she suggested doing a bunch of things I already was doing that qualified as teaching. We do one letter a week (She thought that was too artificial a method). We do art with that letter, writing, add words with that letter to our flashcards, do activities based on stuff that begins with that letter. What are other people doing to facilitate reading/prereading? Had
This can be a touchy subject, especially at such a young age. How old is your pre-schooler??? Personally I believe that the brain development is not fully there for reading yet, and its rather memorization of abstract characters that have little to no meaning behind them for the youngsters other than to please thier parents. Americans among the earliest to learn to read in the world. Yet by the time junior high and high school come we test as some of the lowest for reading skills. Sooner isn't always better. Reading and Reading comprehension takes both parts of the brain to be developed in a certain manner and be able to work together. Children under 7 (all children are developmentally different, this is just a common age for that stage of development) do not have the developed left/right brain communication to fully 'read'. They say the best thing you can do raise a child that reads is to read to them very often. Waldorf schools follow this approach as well. The Parent/Teacher can read even when the child is playing, and not seem to be listening or paying attention. In this way books become an active part of the child's life and they are something that is fun and exciting. When the brain develops the complex capacities to read at its own pace, the child will love stories and books as they will have been a large part of thier life. Reading will then spring naturally as an integrative fun experience rather than one that is just memorizing absractions to get a good grade, steer clear of punishment, or to simply impress parents/teachers. That is my opinion, and it makes sense to me. I would say that the approach you are taking ("do art with that letter, writing, add words with that letter to our flashcards, do activities based on stuff that begins with that letter") is probably not likely to "screw them up". It sounds like your child is having fun, and playing. What is most important to His/Her development is a safe environment to play and explore in. Be cautious of your own expectations about reading, making sure not to impose them on your child. Remember they are not adults, and thier brains are still developing. Play is essential, and it sounds like your "lessons" are integrated as play... Can I ask what you think of the lessons?? What kind of feedback you get from your child? What does your intuition say? Disclaimer: I do not know everything there is to know. I base my opinions on my own personal research from mulitple sources and personal experiences. I am not trying to change anyones opinions with mine, and as such i do not want to spend the time gathering references and resources. if you'd like some then please ask and ill see what i can do.
There's a website called starfall.com that has little cartoons about all the letter sounds and simple stories to read.Xander adores this site,and he is able to name all the letters and the sounds they make when he sees them. He's 2 yrs 4 mos old. I don't think I'm pressuring him,he asks for "letters" every time the computer is on.heck,he's doing it now.
I think it depends on the child. I tried to teach my first child to read in toddlerhood. She liked books (if they were fast enough, the kid never slowed down) but really didn't exibit much interest in learning to read until Kindergarden. (No, I didn't home school her. ) I was really too busy with the next two, pretty close together, to do more than just read. My youngest (born almost a decade after the one before her) was learning letters at 18 months and could read by 3. She did it because she wanted to. You really have to take the child's interest, calmness level (a really physically active kid may not want to sit still long enough at this age to learn to read) and his or her ability. Sage can now read at about a 3-4 grade level (probably higher, as she reads EVERYTHING) at age 5. But almost all of this was self motivation. Her first sentence, at 12 months was "Mama read BOOK!" READ TO your baby. This is invaluable, whether they read on their own at 2 or not until 7 or 8. Every kid is different.
Yeah pretty much agree with Maggie. My parents just read books to me. Guess I must have leant them off by heart and picked it up from there. Would insist they read to me every night. Can also remember having flash cards with letters/words, on and putting them together to make words/sentences. Might have been more for writing though. At seven my reading age was that of a 14/15 yrs old, according to some test they did at school. Perhaps I did have a natural flair for it, though I think it was simply that my parents just took the time to share and teach me about a love of books, so I soaked that up and let it flourish. It's still going strong too, I have an absurdly large book collection and intend to be a writer. Definetly depends on the child though. They did the exact same thing with my brother and he isn't that fussed. He does have major learning difficulties with regard language though.
Back in the fall, Ryvre (3) was doing the "letter a day" thing (color the letter, talk about things that start with that letter, etc) but he got bored of it about 1/4 through the alphabet, so we just quit that whole approach. He was more interested in the alphabet as a whole, so we sang the song, practiced writing, and he traced words. He likes to "spell" words to me that he sees on signs and stuff, and i think that's good for now. That's really all we've done with it so far.
I used a great book with all my kids called, Teach Your Child to read in 100 Easy lessons. I liked it. It moved a little slow with my middle daughter, but we used it as a begining. It only takes 5 minutes a day, we didn't so the writing exercises. And was so melow.
Sage was also given some foam letters. She was only a year old, and I was going to take them away, because I was afraid she was going to eat them! But she started grabbing the letters and yelling "A" "A" "A" "A" and I would tell her which letter it actually was, and she would put it back into the foam puzzle back. A few weels later ALL the letters were "B" "B" "B" "B" amd soon she started actually learning what they were. I had tried to teach a toddler to read with my first one, and she really had no interest, with my fourth baby, I got a child who REALLY wanted to read. But she did a lot of the work. She knew all the letters by 22 months and was reading at 3. When it comes to a toddler or very young child, they need to WANT to to read so young. If the child this young is leading YOU, there is no way you will damage the child. But I think under the age of 6 or 7 or so, the child has to have internal need to want to read on their own. If the child is happy just learning letters, allow them to just do that. There was no real followable progression to Sage's reading after she learned the letters, she just was reading one day. She would get really frustrated when there were words she didn't know, so I made flash cards. I have to respectfully disagree. Sage reads perfectly for Comprehension. It's funny, because the prinicpal of our school said what you did "Oh she may say the words, but she probably has no comprehension." We talk about the stories after she reads them, and have done 3 to 4 th grade Comp work sheets. This child knows what she reading. Like I said before, reading this young is not for all children, but those who DEMAND to learn to read will do well with it.
please take note of this specific portion of the statement and obviouisly if your reading books your child likes and you talk about them afterwards and are reading them together, then its going to be emotionally relevant to the child and be retained in long term memory. Also girls development is up to 2 years ahead of little boys on average...
the first awareness of language is that the phoneme is much more important than letter names , and a good abc song would go like ah ch k i e oo p s ...eh . how many phonetic sounds are in your language ? english has thirty-some . other cultures have more or less and variations of inflection . let the young child enjoy language for what it really is - it is music .
yaya , the phonetic song will make learning any language easier . . shaktooteeoonjuwgah ! ....even woodland fairy speak . b'moo ?
Hmmmm, I had a freind, when I was a child, who went to a "progressive school" in the 1960s. They learned this "phonetic learning" called THI, while the rest of us were just doing Dick and Jane (oddly enough, my Sage learned on Dick and Jane and did really well, I love them) and my friend and many of her class mates were 3-4 grade levels below the rest of the regular taught kids (there were no homeschoolers in our area in the 60s) well into High School, and in fact they found out that many of the kids who had been force "taught" how to "read" twice (once with THI and once with Standard English) and hated it, did worse on reading, spelling and testing and had lower numbers of entry into college, it was really a mess and a huge mistake. I beleive the name of this program was THI, but I don't remember what it stands for. There was a LOT of debate about THI in the Public and Private schools in the late 60s and early 70s, and it was finally abandoned as not being helpful to children in any way......... If you are going to teach a child to read wait until the child is ready and wanting to do it use REAL spelling and reading not some made up silly stuff JMO.
all children develop differently. For my daughter, we mainly used flashcards to learn the alphabet & numbers...we also used blocks & other toys to count and those refrigerator magnet letters to make words. One tip I have is to maybe try teaching the short vowels first because they are more often used. "a like apple, e like elephant, i like igloo, o like octopus, u like umbrella" for example. Right now we are using a book I bought @ Goodwill for $0.50, called A Handbook for Reading (a phonics method), that's where I discovered that short vowels are better to be learned first to minimize confusion. Also, some really good flashcards called Make-A-Word we used to use a lot. 3 letter words w/ a picture puzzle on one side, such as cat, dog, pig, etc...and on the back plain letters to make bigger words later on when they're ready. My daughter turned 5 in June, she technically would barely be starting kindergarten right now. She's already mastered long & short vowels & consonant sounds and can read 2-5 letter words in short sentences because of that 50 cent book! I don't know the norm statistics for kids "expected knowledge" for specific ages....but I feel pretty darn good so far and I can tell she does too. As long as the learning environment is fun, my daughter doesn't mind doing more boring stuff...like the dreaded worksheets! We have a loosely-structured curriculum. She basically reads 1-2 pages of that reading handbook & 2 worksheets a day, one is math the other writing. she knows as soon as she gets those out of the way, we move on to funner things like painting! Then we get creative ways to incorporate critical thinking and such, we have discussions about whatever she wants to know about. Sometimes we don't do any worksheets and just play on sesamestreet.com or other educational games we have. (Don't want to overload her brain/make her feel pressured) In the mornings she reads to me, even though its only a few words! And I read aloud to her @ bedtime. But if she's in the mood for a story in the morning for "homeschool" we most certainly read then too! Sorry, getting overly excited. It just feels so nice to be able to share these thoughts. ANYONE who goes through the same thing, you are not alone, you have my support! =) -iSiS
I made a mistake. The name of the phonetic reading programme was ITA, I think. Does anyone know anything about it? So many teaching methods have been forgotten, the bad ones, like ITA as well as the good ones like Open Classroom.
I don't know about ITA but I can find out, I have a friend who is an early childhood education professor. I will ask her. I don't know about the open classroom concept. The school I went to for elementary school was a renovated open classroom space. It got pretty noisy at times and there wasn't much storage space build into the classroom. H
wow I had no idea about ITA...I should ask someone about it. It looks interesting at first sight because it looks like another language. But I definitely wouldn't use it for my daughter. It makes things more complicated than they should be! I still vouch for the book we're using, learning short vowels first because they are used more often. Then when we get to long vowels pretty much practice practice practice & increase vocabulary. In any language perfect pronunciation is hard. Being able to understand & communicate understandably is a good enough standard in my opinion.
Listen I was taught with ITA in 1964 on Long Island. I can tell you beyond a doubt that this method will have amazing benefits. After the initial 2 weeks of working the phonetic alphabet, your child will be fully reading instantly. It eliminates all the simplified dick and jane crap, so the child is free to read to the complete ability of their vocabulary. As a result, all other learning is greatly accelerated by eliminating the strugle of learning all the illogical nuances of writen english. I was taught ITA in kindergarten in a class of 20, and then transitioned to conventional in the third grade. Most of the programs transitioned after only one year. The benefit to my class was that at an older age of transition, it was almost instantaneous, like reading bilingually. Children that transitioned sooner lost some benefit because their development still made it a strugle. At the sixth grade all 20 of us tested out at a 13+ grade level. Yes thats right every one of us 12 year olds was reading at a college level. The oly draw back at all is that till this day I have a mental block with spelling, at 49 I still catch myself misspelling simple words when I don't concentrate. All 20 of us went on to be top of the class right through school, most skipped grades, and all(exept 1 drug screw up) went on to good colleges and advanced degrees. I am very greatfull to have been through this as an exparimental program and endorse it , but with limitations. Full profesional training is neccesary to instruct with ITA, and the comitment can not be abandend till the end, otherwise you will actually repress development .
