Hello, everyone,
I have 3 children. The eldest ( 6 y.o.) one started reading at 4-5 y.o. after one year break ( I gave up teaching her,when I was told that this method works only 'till 3 y.o.) But she started reading, connecting vowels and consonents together. Not reading the whole word. From that moment she’s been progressing. My middle daughter hasn’t showed her ability yet( 4 y.o.). We’ve been studying sinse her birth. So as the youngest one (2 y.o). So I need an advise. Should I continue using this method (using LR) with my middle daudgher? Or I should start showing letters?
I would say start intoducing phonics. Readingbear.org is fantastic and is free. To answer your question, my son started started reading words at about two. We were doing whole words and never had any success so we switched to readingbear. Later we did have success with whole words using monkeysee. From that point on he would pick up whole words from any source. We are again finishing up doing the word list from readingbear although we are mostly using printed cards which can be found on this page under the video.
http://larrysanger.org/2010/12/baby-reading/
Good luck!
Yes I would start on phonics too. My son started reading at 4 just a few months after I started teaching him. I was showing him LR every day at least once, each lesson only once. We were reading easy Sightwords readers each day. A book every day was our motto and still is. I read a page then he read the page until he got good enough to read them without my help. I actively taught him letter sounds. I didn’t use reading bear but did teach him how to sound out words. We used fridge magnets to build CVC words like cat, sat, mat, fat and he learnt them as word families.
We used preschool prep sight word apps and they helped a lot. Along with their DVDs.
I have to admit the I didn’t think little reader was going to do much at his age except give him a bigger bank of skills to draw on but now that he reads fluently I can see it DID help. Every now and then he will walk past my IPad, glance at the screen and determine exactly what the page is about instantly from one word of heading. Yesterday he picked “waterfall” instantly from a page showing hair styles. He read it in a nano second! :yes: so the sight word focus must help. My two best fastest readers are the ones who got flash card exposure. The one that didn’t has some bad reading habits ( like skipping word endings, guessing too often and not alot of overall interest in reading at all). Based on this I suggest doing LR continuously as long as you can. I just think at age 4 and up you need MORE than just flash cards.
Try any systematic phonics program along with easy sight word readers and sight word games. Do it EVERYDAY and you will see dramatic success.
Thank you so much for your advices and warm support! I’ll continue LR and add phonics. Should I use phonics along with LR with 2 y.o. daughter? And won’t it reduse the speed of reading hereafter?
Based on observations and comments from many of the people on here I have devised my own rule of thumb…
Sight words before 3, phonics after 3. Now 36 months isn’t this strict magic perfect number. But it is how it worked best for us and many others.
OK. Thank you for advices! We’ll do our best 
Byall means show your 2 year old phonics but don’t slow down the speed or style you present it to the 4 year old just because the 2 year old is watching. LRhas plenty enough phonics it for a 2 year old. Showing phonics won’t slow down anyone’s reading unless you omit flash cards to do it. Since you will be doing both that won’t matter.
It’s important to allow some special individual attention to the 4 and 6 year olds while they learn to read. Make the reading time something special and they will line up for their turn. :biggrin:
It's important to allow some special individual attention to the 4 and 6 year olds while they learn to read. Make the reading time something special and they will line up for their turn.
I’ve been thinking about it for last 2 days lol Summing up the expirience of the way my 4 y.o. read her first word in such book http://www.umnitsa.ru/cat/knizhnaja-razminka-sinij-vypusk/ I’ve understood that she did that, reading with me the bedtime story for her
And the 6 year old daughter started reading books after having the special time with her mom:),that just showed her basic rules of reading! 15 minutes and the resault is a 5 year old book reader:)
Thank you!