Hi,
I have a 4 year old. Since I work, he has been going to daycare since he was 2 years old. I was under the impression that he would learn the basics of reading in school but I am finding out that it is not so. I read to him everyday but now I want to teach my son to read and am looking for tips to do so. I was looking for some suggestions for books that will help me understand how I can teach him to read effectively – a book that has good techniques, step by step lessons, etc.
Thanks in advance,
Preets
Hello Preets! Welcome to the forum!
You have already done one of the most important things by reading to him!! There are so many different ways to teach reading found in many different books, you could get lots of suggestions on this one! lol Most of them would be great suggestions too!
If you really want a book that will teach you how to teach reading, from my experience, I would have said to use the Abeka Handbook for Reading. You wouldn’t have to use the whole curriculum, that book alone has a very systematic way to teach reading.
I say “I would have” because now that I have been on this forum and heard about DadDude’s ReadingBear program, I would have to recommend that. It can be found at http://www.readingbear.org Before you use that program it is best to teach your child the basic consonant letter sounds. A good website for doing that is www.starfall.com
Most kids find this a very engaging, fun way to learn how to read. My 2.5 year old loves it, and my 6 year old nephew is loving it too!
Here are a couple of other posts about teaching older youngsters. http://forum.brillkids.com/teaching-your-older-child/how-to-start-teaching-my-3-year-old-daughter and http://forum.brillkids.com/teaching-your-child-to-read/has-anyone-used-the-book-‘teach-your-child-to-read-in-20-easy-lessons’ These posts had some interesting ideas about teaching reading. You can find more topics by using the search button in the gray area at the top of this page.
Hope this is helpful! And I hope other parents chime in too!
I think you have done well CVMomma :yes:
So as a teacher…
First teach him some/all of the letter sounds. Yep starfall is my top pick for this too. Although I really do think reading eggs is worth every cent for a 4 year old.
Then teach them to blend some words. Rading bear shows you this step by step. Once you have the idea of how, do it using magnetic letters, handwriting and use reading bear if he likes it.
Finally introduce some sight words. The words like “the” “to” “they” etc need to be instantly recognizable. T teach these use flashcards, games and writing them. Look for the first group of dolch words or beginners sight words ( google!) to get your first list.
Any other interesting, ( favourite foods, toys) personally meaningful ( family names) commonly seen words should be shown as flashcards also. Be sure to show flashcards for colour words, number words, and words commonly used in school ( name, friends, play, book…) flash your words in groups of about 10 for a 4 year old. Do multiple sessions a day. Flash before and after work and just before bed.
Your son may know some alphabet sounds from daycare, he may surprise you by consolidating his knowledge quickly.
I have a 4 year old boy, he uses little reader twice a day, he is learning a lot from it. Not just words. He is also getting very familiar with phonics and knows when I read a word wrong. He can read simple sentences and decode three letter words. Actually it’s probably time I asked him to decode longer words…
Thank you CVMomma and Mandabplus3 - your posts gave me good direction on where and how to start 
I am in a similar position. I didn’t really do really EL with my 4 year old although I did start the process sooner then I did with my 6 year old. I used preschool preps meet the letters and meet the phonics to teach ds his letters and letter sounds. Then I have been doing reading bear with him. He has learned to sound out cvc words from that. I just got a drip pan that I can use wet erase markers with and I am working on phrases with cvc words but it is slow going DS has trouble with smaller print but doesn’t need glasses yet. Some parents have success with Teach your child to read in 100 easy lessons or the Ordinary Parents Guide to Teach your Child Reading. My kids needed more practice than those books offer but it is all a lot of kids need around that age.
DS is still in the stage where he sounds out every word so phrases are choppy. I debating whether or not to use the meet the sight words video with him. I tend to like to use phonics methods with older kids but I am wondering if sight words would maybe help him see what it feels like to just recognize a word but I don’t want it to translate into guessing the words he hasn’t been introduced to. Add in the fact that he has an articulation but definitely not a language delay and sounding out things are hard for him because he still has sounds missing. I want to gently work on him so he keeps making steady progress but I of course don’t want to push. I don’t feel I can even ask how to help because most people don’t think 4 year olds need to be reading. On here people started much sooner and have kids much younger than him reading. I don’t think he needs to read now but I think giving him a earlier start by teaching him now gives us more time to work out kinks and gives him a chance to get it out of the way. I also feel their brains pick it up a little easier earlier. I feel like I should have started earlier but at least he is learning something.
I would start with making sure he knows the letter sounds, my pick is leap frog “Letter factor”. With daily viewing I think a 4 year old should have those in a week. Then I would do a combination of reading bear (we start off with the sound out slowly, until they understand combining and then do the sound out quickly thereafter, I have then do the sound out quickly with a section until they can read the words then do let me wound it out as a test, if they get them all they get a star and move on) and “The ordinary parents guide to teaching reading”. I think the preschool prep “Meet The Sight Words” videos are great for teaching the the sight words that link the cvc words together to get kids reading faster. I would then go into maybe the bob books or other early phonics based readers and progress from there.
I agree with a lot of the parents here.
I highly recommend a phonics introduction with your 4 year old. Starfall.com then readingbear.org are amazing.
Then check out your library for phonics based readers. Some people seem to really love Bob Books. I am personally not a fan. But there has been a lot of success with them.
I highly recommend the Usborne Phonics series if you can find it. Also the Usborne My First reading series are great.
Local library’s are amazing. Talk to a librarian, they should be able to help.
My library also carries the 2 text books mentioned above; The ordinary parents guide to teaching reading, and how to teach your child to read in 100 lessons.
Do a search for Flesch cards. DadDude created these cards and based reading bear off them. They are good cards to print out or to use as a master word list.
Lastly I also recommend preschool Prep’s Meet the Phonics and Meet the Sight Words. I would skip the Meet the Letters DVD.
When you are teaching phonics you can easily skip teaching your child the name of the letters and just focus on the letter sounds. Letter names are helpful later when teaching spelling. And focus on lower case letters as the majority of text is lower case. The only reason upper case letters are often taught first is because they are easier to write.
Does anyone know how to teach them to blend quicker once they have blending down? Or is it a practice make perfect thing. My now 6 year old got stuck at the painfully sounding everything out stage for a while so everything was choppy stage and now my 4 year old is in it. Books are a no go for now because it is too frustrating but I have been putting short phrases on a board to see if that can help. I decided to just go with the sight words videos because even my dd’s kindergarten teacher who teaches reading with the spalding method is suggesting to teach them.
My current plan to help my 4 year old is to have him work on sounding out cvc words until he can do them faster for easy readers and the meet the sight word videos. After he does that then I will have him learn the phonograms. Once he has the phonograms down I will progress to harder words and go through more presentations on reading bear. Does that sound like a decent plan for a 4 year old? I am flying by the seat of my pants but it helps to hear from others. I’m open to suggestions. Some kids are natural readers who gain fluency fast and some need to work on it. My kids seem to need to really work on it. I just learned naturally so it is hard to know how to teach it.
I forgot to mention with the ordinary parent’s guide to teaching reading I would skip straight to the reading instruction and skip the whole learning letter sounds part of the book
Teachingmykids,
I highly recommend introducing the sight words now. Sight words are often not just words that break phonics rules but words that are used frequently. On, in, can and many more decodeable words top sight word lists. They are certainly in the preschool prep series. Knowing these words instantly will really help your 4 year olds reading take off.
He will be able to read more complex sentence and even books almost with fluency. He will get stuck on the words he has to sound out. But they will be less of them in a sentence. Your son will also be able to figure out words by context, picture clues and phonics. All of those are essential for early reading.
Just make sure to keep with the phonics instruction on top of reading.
To speed them up
Firstly yes teach instant recognition of the 100 most common words. ( the sight words ) my absolute top pick for this is the preschool prep APP GAME! Wow I cannot believe how fast kids learn the words on this with just a once a day session. Amazingly fast! You truly can learn each app in a week. I have tried many methods this one wins hands down. Second choice is Mrs Perkins Dolch Kit. She has great games ( FREE! Google it!) and the preprimer and primer roll a dice type game is wonderful. Print, Laminate and play. Simple
After that’s all sorted. Read the same things over and over. So for each sentence they decode it using phonics and then reread the sentence until its fluent and with expression. For a book decode a page, reread the page. Next day reread the entire book. And again the next day. The words will sink in this was and the fluency will come faster.
Thirdly read a lot! Practice makes perfect. :yes:
Ok so he has learned some sight words and it has helped him move on to things like the starfall stories but it has created another problem. He is now doing lots of guessing from context rather than paying attention to words and he has gotten lazy about sounding out the words he needs to. He is still slow about sounding words out and I think that is the problem. I had him sound out simple words a lot but it isn’t clicking. He can blend but he really drags it out like c a t cat rather than cccaattt. He able to get more words without needing to sound out but I wondering if he a really good guesser. I don’t know how to teach him to blend more efficiently and to stop the guessing. He doing it a lot now.
James is younger, and it took him a long time to blend. And he is better at it. We just need to work on more advanced phonics rules now.
What worked for us was to take a phonics break for a month or so. During this time we just focused on just reading. I would sound out any unfamiliar words for James when he was reading to me.
Then he just started to use blending one day again. I now do phonics instruction as a seperate thing to his reading. Usually I use the chalkboard or whiteboard to write out 10-20 CVC and CVCV words, including nonsense words. I have James sound them out then erase them as he gets them right. We do this daily. But I never have him do any strict phonics reading books.
James’ reading practice is at a differnt time. Without phonics instruction he has a DRA reading level of 16. Which is a solid 1st grade reading level I think. He stil depends on context clues or pictures when possible. But he also sounds out words that he does not know. The more he reads the more he applies what he has learnt in phonics lessons.
I watched this with him and today he seems to be blending a little better with the words I tried. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-4z6wI1OjPQ
Maybe the problem was that reading bear and other methods teaches with pauses between sounds and they just get faster. He actually has a harder time with sentences with all cvc words because it is a lot of work so I will do starfall which has some sight words and I see Sam readers. Then I will just have him work on sounding out cvc words separately. He was struggling through that without any improvement on speed even with lots of practice. I was going to go back to cv words but I think need to work on blending without pausing instead. I was worried the sight words is leading to the guessing but hopefully it will work itself out with practice.