4 year old not looking at the book when read to

Hi everyone!

So I have finally introduced chapters books to my 4 year old. Before doing that, I used to get her early reading books and I would read them once and by the second time she is already reading them herself. I wanted to get her something more challenging so I bought 3 chapter books( the littles, Charlotte’s web and pippi longstockings). We started with the Littles. I would read with my fingers on the words while my daughter looked at the words then I noticed that she was more interested in looking at my face when I’m reading. She keeps doing this every time I am reading with her. I know she is so interested in the story as she keeps bringing the book every time she sees me sitting down and when alone she flips the pages and reads some words. I am somehow confused if it’s a bad thing or something good :mellow: . We have moved on to the second book and she still does the same thing. Has anyone else experienced this?

Hello
I have not experienced this. When is your daughter turning five? What program did you do to get her to start to read and how long did it take her from reading teh sight words to reading all the other words? I did Doman with my kids when they were 2.5 years old and it never worked. I followed it religiously. They are soon 4 in a month. So last month I introduced the PReschool PRep Sight Words LEvel 1 and they are reading the early readers that go with it but I find that they need Large amounts of repetition with the sight words for it to finally click. Just five times as Doman says is not enough. My question to you is when do they go from reading the sight words in PReschool Prep to all the other sight words? They can decode basic CVC words.

Hi Artfiend! My daughter will be 5 by the end of the year. I used flashcards doman method when she was 2.5 and a couple of months later I started with LR. So I used both doman flashcards (homemade) and LR. I later stopped Doman as it takes a lot of time. I introduced sight words using doman and I also paste them around the house and also write stories using those words. I also read to her a lot of books( like the see sam books) with the sight words repeated a couple of times. Yes repetition is key so you have to repeat the words over and over again. I cannot really answer your question as I have not used Preschool prep. However, I noticed that around 3 she would recognize a lot of the sight words even though she didn’t want to read them. I even thought she could not read. I tried not to focus on output rather on input. Children all learn at different pace and as long as you are teaching they are learning. Maybe they know a lot more than you think they do. So just be patient and keep introducing new stuff and repeating them too. The time you spend together is more important.

Thank you dear sweet soul. That was a very moving reply. Its all about flowing with ease and grace. :slight_smile: