For those of you, who teach words with flashcards / LR. Can you tell, about how many words your children can read? We are doing especially the flash cards method, and I take out words, when my daughter can read them. I noticed, that she not always can read words, that she saw 1-2 months ago.
I would have to say my daughter can read almost 1,000 words at the moment. Or maybe more. Sometimes she’ll just read a word I never taught her to read. It doesn’t include using the Little Reader, Monkisee, and Your Baby Can Read.
I found that delivering the ‘old’ words in a different way can help keep them fresh. Meaning either by having her watch her videos, or doing flashcard games or finding or making books with the words she’s already learned. I take some index cards, those little rings and make little stories for my daughter to read on those and she likes them because she thinks they are her little books and she can read them without me being over her shoulder because they have words in them she can already read all on her own.
Its been a little easier because my daughter is 4 and seems to be soaking up everything around her at the moment. She loves reading and she loves math right now so we’re constantly working on those at the moment. I am going to throw some more handwriting at her because she’ll be a kindergardener this year.
I’ll admit some words she has forgotten so we go over them. I just add them back into our pile of cards and we go over them if she has forgotten them. Seems to work like a charm.
Wow, Tracy, over a 1000 words? Thats a lot. When did you began teaching her with flashcards / LR? We began 3 months ago, and I showed her about 200 words until now. She just remembers about 50-100… the rest she either doesn’t know anymore or doesn’t want to show.
Most of you clicked “over 100 words”. Are you sure, that your children can read all of those words or is that just the number of words, you’ve already shown to them?
I started at the end of December of 2010. So December 31st was when I purchased your Baby Can Read. Mind you my daughter is 4yrs old too. But she went through the entire program in a little under 2 months. Then we moved on to Monkisee , now we are almost done with the 1st half of Brillkids and, yes she can read all those words. I’ll have to take some pictures or do some video. She is reading at least an early 1st grade level. I am also almost done with the 1st set of 1st grade sight words with her too that I had left from the K12 program I used with my 3rd daughter over a year ago. I kept them and I’m glad I did.
The thing is you really can’t compare children. They are all different and when they are ready they are ready. I think in our case my daughter was just ready to learn to read and I caught her at the right moment in time. Plus some children learn best visually. There are different types of learners. Some learn best visually, (using the eyes) , auditory( using the ears), kinesthetic( using the body) and some children need a combination of all of the above. The trick is to find out the best way your child learns the best. I just think my youngest is a visual learner. Plus from what I’ve noticed it takes longer for the younger ones to learn and remember those words , versus a 3 or 4 yr old. I find that right around that age the kids really seem to kick it in high gear and can remember more words faster. I’m not sure if its just me or what. But from watching videos, reading about early reading and from my own experience ( my 2nd daughter read at the age of 4.5 and is my better reader and my youngest at the age of 4 are both by far my better readers.) But that maybe a matter of my own opinion. I guess if you start younger you have a better chance of your child reading more words by the age of 3 or 4 too if they pick up on it as well.
How are you flashing the cards? One of the members on here has a blog (http://downsyndromeupupupandaway.blogspot.com/2011/05/fast-flashing-method.html) and she showed the best way to flash the cards. Even I found I was flashing them a little bit to slowly. Now that I’ve changed it my daughter is picking up words even a bit more quicker than she had been.
I also make sure when I can I run my finger across words I read when reading stories, and across the words in our missal at church when we are singing etc.
Tracy,
Thank you so much for your reply. That’s really fast, in the video, I think I should try it. We are flashing very slow through the cards, discussing every word & picture.
But I think, she would remember more words, if I flashed them real quick.
Lolobride - I don’t know exactly how many words my son can read, but he is able to read entire books out aloud (he reads Mr Men, Dr Seuss - he can read the yellow cover books, and he reads a variety of stories from Thomas and Friends which ranges in difficulty) so that’s got to be more than 100 words. He’s also a very curious boy and likes to read my text messages, emails and anything he thinks looks interesting.
But Tracy is right - every child is different. Even between my two children I can see a difference. My older son has loved books ever since he was really little (I could take him to a bookstore and trust him to handle the books without wrecking the pages). My younger son, on the other hand, would chew and crush any book that I gave him. I could read whole books to my older son and he would sit still all the way through. My younger son would snatch the book from me or get up and crawl around while I tried to read books with one word per page. This is comparing them at around the same age.
And yes, you need to flash quickly. I used to flash so slowly that it put my older son off flash cards entirely. He was bored at my pace. So now I’ve picked up the pace for my younger son.
At last count my dd knew over 1,500 words. It was slower going at the start, but she seems to be learning faster & faster as time goes on. I think she is recognizing letter combinations as well as patterns in words as she often seems to be recognizing words by the 2nd or third time she sees them. We do mainly flashcards & for a while I used to put a review set ineach week to be sure she wasn’t forgetting them. I’m not sure if the reviewing helped or not, but I don’t do it now because she doesn’t deem to forget any words (it was hard to tell when she was little as we were careful not to test her).
I am sure my dd is remembering all if those words as she recognizes them in any form - books posters handwriting etc. & doesn’t have trouble when reading unfamiliar stories.
My dd turned 4 last week. I just read through the other posts - that’s her in the video Tracy mentioned.
Lolobride,
I used mostly Little Reader, some flashcards, letter tiles, starfall.com, and books. I can’t tell you how many words my daughter reads because she can decode some new words by herself. She is reading on at least a first grade level - perhaps even higher. I stopped teaching awhile ago because she likes reading by herself and only comes to me if she can’t decode a word. Now she is a book worm and is annoyed when I want to teach her. I can’t complain because her reading skills are still improving even without my lessons. She is 4 yr 1 month old. I started when she was 23 months old. I wouldn’t be so concerned about how many words your daughter can read. My daughter seemed to forget words. She only retained animal and food words, and only if we kept repeating them. She never really got to a point where she retained so many words that it was obviously time for sentences. Instead I followed Glenn Doman’s advice about moving toddlers (age 2 and up) to sentences very quickly to avoid boredom. I just taught her some dolche sight words and went onto sentences at age 2.5. She got confused a lot. She would anticipate the sentence and guess rather than read. I did a lot of the reading while she repeated me. I felt like I was doing something wrong but I kept at it anyway. I think I added some phonics based word building games at age 3. Still I felt like she forgot the old stuff whenever I moved onto new stuff. Then magically at around 3.5 she just started reading books. At first she would pick out a few words on the page to read. Then about a month later she was reading a few pages, and then finally whole story books. Once she was ready to read, she began to remember all of those dormant forgotten words. I have a video of her reading a book at age 3 yrs 10 months. So just keep teaching your daughter and maybe go onto to sentences soon. It will all come together. When it does, don’t forget to share a video with us.
Best of Luck, Lori
My baby boy could speak like 10 words as early as 6 months I have also tried to teach him about signs. For my older ones like 5 I have tried this http://www.clicknkids.com for them to learn how to read. Just sharing 
Hi everybody,
So many thanks for your answers. I always thought, my daughter has to read about a few hundred words, before moving to sentences and whole selfmade (or another) books.
But now, I think I will try before… maybe I will make a book myself with very few words on a page, little sentences, that will be easy for her to read.
Sometimes I see videos of little children reading already whole books at the age of 2… we are very far away from that. But we will just keep on going.
Since yesterday I teach her with very fast-moving flashcards, she seems to pick up the words even faster. Wow! Thank you so much for your ideas!
Lolobride
I did not start on sentences until my dd knew many single words. In hindsight I should have stared earlier. As soon as I started to teach her couplets & sentences, she also started to join words when speaking. There was such a direct correlation between her reading level & speech.
My daughter is reading books so also knows well over 100 words though I have no clue how many as she is also able to work some words out by herself. By the time they know enough words to make meaningful sentences you should start doing this as reading in context is a much easier way to learn - my daughter is reading level 5 of keywords (Ladybird) abd we do review flashcards for these words, but very often I find the ones she sticks with on the flashcards she reads just fine when in context in a book.
hmm…my kid is also reading books as early as 5 she knew a lot of words. I have tried assisting them learn to read using phonics and it really works.
Hi,
I have 2 year old twin boys and they are picking up really fast. They know more than 100 words already using flashcards and Brill kids.
I am planning on also getting the Monki See flashcards to keep learning fun and fresh for them.
I am getting the hunch that they have passed the single word stage and I need additional resources to get them into reading sentences. I really like the make your own book idea, is there any other idea that worked for anyone?
Thanks guy
i started with LR , TW and flash cards last november. I think she read… barely 10 words. probably 5 words of Chinese… hmmm…
What is wrong? I do LR , English , Chinese, followed by TW with her daily, Then 20 minutes of English, using flash cards, HOP, Jones Genius, . Books reading by bedtime, but she is not reading much. She does not like me to ask her the words,… What to do? She is 34 months old now.
You should not worry too much about it, and yes most kids do not like to be asked.
Wait it out, pretty soon she will start reading everything she sees around the house and outside.
Keep on being consistent with teaching her, it sounds like your doing a really good job :mellow:
Thanks Babygeniusmom, your kind and encouraging words made my day…