How much do your 4-6 old children read to themselves?

Early Learning Teaching Your Child to Read
1

HI everybody,

My older DD can read since she is 3 years old, but unfortunately doesn’t read yet for pleasure (she is 4.5 now). I don’t want to force her, but would love for her, if she practiced a bit every day. She reads once or twice a week for 10 minutes, often after I asked her to read a bit.

What would you do?

If I read to her (she loves that), I often motivate her to read the first 2-3 sentences of the chapter or so. That she does but she is happy to stop after that.

How much do your little children read for pleasure?

2

Mine read alot. They take books in the car with them, I find them reading instead of getting dressed for school, they read before bed and read if they wake up first, they often wonder off for quiet reading before dinner and apparently they go to the library at school playtime about once a week to read also.
I have one I would consider a reluctant reader but I get her to read by carefully selecting books for her. If it is a topic she likes ( fairy tales!) she will read a harder book ( the original classics) but if it isn’t a topic that interests her the book needs to be easy. She enjoys children’s picture books still ( she is 7 now) and I am happy for her to read those as I am often surprised at the level of vocabulary in them. Plus she doesn’t seem to notice how much reading she has done by devouring 10 picture books in a sitting. :slight_smile:
My son is expected to read to me out loud every day. I don’t mind what he reads so long as he does it regularly. He can pick. I also make both my girls ( who read as well as an adult) read out loud to me occasionally just to be sure they are learning new word pronunciations properly, plus we enjoy it!
To encourage reading leave books in the boring places. Toilet, car, mums handbag, waiting rooms…rotate the titles regularly. New books are exciting! Provide books that are an easy read with great illustrations. An advanced reader is still going to enjoy books written for their age bracket. Don’t give up on picture books too soon.
Expect a regular read aloud session. Keep it light short and part of your daily routine.
Remember she can already read so it really doesn’t matter that much any more. She will be reading environmental print every day, its OK if you do the reading for a while a let her enjoy what the other kids her age get, no pressure story time.
Let her choose the books as much as possible. Order some in the mail addressed to her! I believe kids who have books all around read more than we realise, my kids certainly surprise me regularly.

3

Hi Mandabplus,

How old are your children? How old were they, when they started to read regularly for themselves?

And one more question: You wrote, you make your son read to you aloud every day. Does he always like that? What do you do, if he doesn’t want to?

Thanks again for sharing!

Lolobride

4

Why don’t you just require her to read? Just because you require something of her doesn’t mean it has to feel forced.
Get a lot of simple books with big words and large pictures, have her sit for 10 minutes in the morning and 10 in the evening and read with you.
Begin slowly transitioning from reading to her to the point where you are reading with her so that eventually you guys are reading together.
I would recommend the We Both Read series for the buddy reading.
Continue to read to her everyday.

Does your daughter go to school or will she begin going to school soon?
Get some of those audio books on CD that includes the book and have her read along to those.
There are many ideas out there for getting kids reading but if you make it a stress-free, but required part of her day then it shouldn’t be a huge deal.

5

Now they are 5,7 and 10. My boy has been reading for a year and a bit. He is the one closest to your child’s age. He likes to read in the car and prefers to read books he has already had me read to him for his independant reading time.
I expect him to read to me each day. Sometimes he complains about it but it is an expectation so he just does it. When he stated reading I sat and told him I was going to teach him to read and he would need to read to me for a short time every single day. I told him to be a good reader like mummy you need to practice reading every day. I have never made him read if he is just too tired, that is not a good idea. He has never cried about reading time with mummy. I snuggle close and often hold the book for him and underline the words with my finger. I don’t test him, if he doesn’t know a word I help him sound it out. It is a stress free reading time for him so he has no reason not to participate. I am not so good at routine so I just try and grab him for reading time when he isn’t in the middle of playing agame, so I don’t interrupt him. For a long time we read while I waited for dinner to finish cooking, it distracted him from being hungry it I had to be careful not to burn dinner! lol
Your child is old enough to understand that you expect them to read to you out loud for a while each day. You can require it as the beginning of your story time easily enough. Just be sure to stop if they are too tired. You will know when they are too tired because their reading ability will dramatically drop!
When my kids were switching from reading with me to independent reading ( which usually happens sometime around their ability to read a short novel although they all read independantly from the time they could read their own picture books) I had them read the first chapter or two out loud and then left them to the rest of the book themselves. This way they got a good grasp of the plot, new vocabulary words and interest in the book enough to continue. I then just put regular bedtime reading into their routine ( yep this is the one routine I can manage most days of the week! lol )
Aim for a little but often. I hope that helps.

6

My daughter isn’t quite four, so may not be quite what you are looking for, but here is what we do:

During quiet time every day we work on a more difficult chapter book for a read-aloud. She reads aloud the even-numbered pages and I read the odds, until we complete a chapter so so. This summer we did Mr. Popper’s Penguins, The Tale of Despereaux, charlotte’s Web, A Cricket in Times Square, and Little House on the Prairie. This gets in a fair bit of reading, and she does really enjoy it, but I don’t consider that strictly reading for pleasure.

For that she has a ‘reading tent’ in her room filled with her favorite things. She disappears in there an I can hear her reading:) sometimes she reads to her dolls!

Another favorite tactic is to put her to bed about 15 minutes early, but allow her a flashlight to read in bed with the lights out. We do this most nights unless she is cranky or we are behind schedule. She totally thinks she is getting one over on me, staying up late. And she will read to herself until she is tired, turns the light off, and goes to sleep.
Kids will often do all sorts of things to delay bedtime, and this is a good way to direct it…and so much fun to listen in outside the room lol

7

We created a “reading environment” for our LOs since they were tiny tots. Even when they were just little babies they had their bookshelf, with “just their” books, first cloth books, then board books, and now a lot of bookshelves with different sets of books.

We always kept some books separatey for reading with mommy or daddy, or under supervision ( but not too strict about that, the only rule – when they take them they have to put them where they belong in an organised manner), but then there are their bookshelves, where they can organize their books te way they want and they are always accessible.

We have book coner set up with two bookshelves, cozy reading pillows, stuffies, little armchair, they disappear there regularly and just read, book after book. I would say, a couple of hours a day at least, at different times throughout the day. I keep some books in boxes in our garage and rotate them every couple of months. That keeps their interest, even if the books I put back on the shelves is something they read over and over a few months ago, it still feels like a new book. The I always add about 30% of the new books they have never read before into the mix. We usually organize it together, but then I leave it up to them to chose and read what they want. My boy ( who just turned 3 is not reading as fluently as his big sister ( 4.5), he can read, and it shows more when he is there on his own carefully following the words :-)), but often he is getting a bit lazy and makes his sister to read the book outloud :rolleyes: Every nap time and evening they can chose a book from there to read together with me or my husband, and then we are taking turns reading.

Then we also have books sorted by topics, – natural history, geography, arts, poetry, etc. And we read those together throughout the day.

We do a fair bit of driving on a regular basis, and they like having books with them in the car for long drives or when we go grocery shopping. What I did, I set up a little bookshelf in garage, where they can unload the books they read during their drive and pick up the new books on their way out, it is really handy and keeps them happy, providing extra reading time.

We have a few of their books on the shelf at my office ( I work from home), so when they come to see me and need to wait for a few minutes they just take a book.

So basically what we did is simple – just made the books available in organised way at different places around the house, and keep them rotated, to keep their interest high. Hope these ideas help :slight_smile:

8

Sounded like a good idea to me when I did not have children, but actually it does not really work that way. Listening to CD is OK to get familiar with the story, to build confidence for reading, but reading along with it can be quite confusing, and put unnecessary pressure on the kid. None of my kids like it. I am sure there are some that do, but thought to share our experience.

9

My son will be 4 in December. And we read everyday. It is expected before nap and bedtime at night that we read. We often buddy read. He gets the left or right and I get the opposite pages. Buddy reading is for harder books. We are reading through the same list that Keri mentioned. Lol. James loves Little House chapter books and we read All of a Kind Family this way. But he would NEVER gravitate towards them on his own.

However he reads a lot of the time on his own throughout the day. We have books all over the house. Yup it is a mess. And he sticks to picture books. And books too “easy” for his level. Which is fine. And it seems like at least once an hour during his free play I will look over at him and see him sitting on the floor with his thumb in his mouth reading a book to himself. We were out and about for about 4 hours today and he still managed to read 11 picture books by himself.
We don’t have the TV on during the day unless it is a math or science video that he watches with dedication. Not sure if that matters.

10

I think not having TV on makes a huge difference. And yes, even though we make a point of putting books back after we read them, we do end up with the book mess around the house all the time :nowink: We are working on it, well at least mommy does after everyone is asleep lol

11

Yes no TV will definitely help increase reading time. My kids watch TV once a week if that. It’s just not a part of their daily activities. I will put on something educational but they seem to prefer watching that stuff on the iPad now so they can watch it wherever they happen to be.

12

My son will be 5 in November and we started to teach him when he was 13 months old (YBCR). since then reading is part of our life. It is part of our every day routine. Even though he goes to school every day, full day we still read together in the morning and in the evening for sure. And I can tell that he loves reading! And I am really happy about it.He always takes a book with him in the car and even in the bathroom.
I also use reading for its purpose: to get information. So I ask him to read the instruction on the box or read the signs on the street, stores, at the airport…
We go to the library every week. Since school started sometimes I go without him, but he is still excited about the new books when he comes home.
He doesn’t watch a lot of TV either. We don’t even have time for that. Instead of TV he can use the Ipad with lots of educational apps on it so he still learns or practicing something.
Hope I could help.

13

Hello everybody,

Thank you for your answers, wow, so many interesting ideas! I love to hear about your everyday life, how you integrate reading in it.

We read together in the morning, when she eats breakfast and before she sleeps in the evening, usually about 30 min a day. Sometimes more and sometimes, when she is tired in the evening, less.

So, yesterday I asked her, if she wants to learn to read as good as me. She said yes and I told her, that for that she has to practice every day a bit. (I’ve read this idea from someone here in the thread) So since yesterday we practiced reading and it went very GOOD. I didn’t have to force her or so, just motivate her. I’m so happy now. Yesterday she read about 15 minutes, today about 30 min. Wow!

Also now I make the piano lesson (we use Soft Mozart) a part of our daily routine, I hope, it will work well. She plays now since almost 1.5 years and doesn’t make much Progress.

I think, my problem was, that I thought, I shouldn’t request from her things like reading and practising piano, or she won’t like it.

regards

14

Reading, math, eating well, keeping clean (washing hands etc) and doing basic chores are the only things that are required of my son every day.

15

Can anyone recommend a good list of books to start with? My LO can read small sentences but never wants to do so by himself.

16

The internet has so many lists. But I highly recommend the Biscuit books. This is what my son read a lot when he was at that stage.

17

I actually made an effort to time our reading times on an average day. Some days it is less and some days it is more. If I would let them , it would be more, as they think reading in their reading corner is the best treat. But Thursday I timed ( only significant enough) chunks of time they were reading independently.

My daughter is 4, and she woke up earlier that day ( that way she has extra time before breakfast). I timed only chunks of reading that were more then 5 minutes. She had 4 hours and 35 minutes independent reading time that day, with her brother at 3 yo 2 and 50 minutes.

At this point her speed of reading is faster then my husband’s ( :yes: ), she red a 95 pages fairy tale book yesterday in 1 hour and 25 minutes. It had about 3-4 paragraphs per page with 3-5 sentences per paragraph. Half of the time she reads quietly and another half softly outloud to herself ( I think when the text is a bit more sophisticated). . Amazingly enough speed does not hinder her comprehension, after reading book about oceans yesterday as we traveled she saw a picture of a Mermaid and quoted almost a full paragraph word for word from what she just read in the book. I belive that speed of reading and retantion of what she read can be creadited to Right Brain training. We did some, but there is a lot we have not done yet. And seing the results and potential of Right Brain abilities makes we think it is really worth investing time and effort in fostering it…

18

That is amazing Skylark. You don’t think she reads so fast because she learned to read early? What kind of right braun training did you do? Sorry for going off subject.

19

I didn’t have time to read the other responses so may be repeating but here’s ever worked for us.

Starting when teaching reading we tried to make it really fun. Dd started reading books at age 3.5 years & I always tried to have very interesting & age appropriate books for her.

I also tried to have easier selections available for her to read to herself. Even now I do this. dd is reading at around a 3rd or 4rth grade level so that’s what we read at bedtime. When she reads to herself she enjoys 1st or 2nd grade level stories although she does read much higher levels at times as well.

I also make sure that we have loads of books available for her. This doesn’t have to cost a lot. I often pop into the thrift store & buy a couple dozen books at a time laying 10 to 25 cents each. I’m pickly too - these are good quality books chooses specifically for my dd’s needs. I think we are lucky to have pretty generous donors to our local store.

20

My 6 yr old daughter reads to herself daily for fun. Sometimes I let my kids stay awake 30 minutes past bedtime as long as they are reading in bed. They love reading in bed to themselves. Maybe it would motivate your kids too. I think it makes them feel grown up.

Lori