Ideas to reinforce what we learn with Little Reader?

Early Learning Early Learning General Discussions
1

Hello everyone! I need your help here, specially from those of you who managed to teach your child to read with Little Reader.

Before having Little Reader we spent a couple of months with Doman homemade cards, but she didn’t like them.

Then we got LR and she liked it. We are already in lesson 60, although there is no visible progress. She doesn’t recognize any words and never chooses the right word at the games section (she chooses the right picture though, so she is willing to cooperate. I would say she really doesn’t recognize any words at all T_T )

She will soon be 2 and we have been “learning” for 5 months or so (first with Doman then with LR).

I have tried showing her some phonics videos but she isn’t too interested and I also don’t like her watching too much TV at this age.

My question is:

What could I do to reinforce what we learn with LR? What do you do with your child apart from that? Do you print LR flash cards? How often (and how) do you use them? Do you have any other games or ways to learn together?

By the way before the summer we had been doing Little Reader (in 2 languages) and Little Musician. After the holidays my daughter seems to have lost a lot of interest and I can only get her to watch Little Reader while eating, and only in her mother language (if I show her the Chinese one she starts to shout: “No, no, no!”, although she seemed to love it before the summer).

I will be really thankful I you can help me here…

2

Little Reader was the key for us, for sure!

The reason we liked it is because we can keep track of the lessons and steadily progress, and because of shortness and well-roundeness of the lessons. I would say it is more imporant to have a regular short well-rounded input every day, then long elaborate learning activity once in a while.

The secret, that I discovered with my children is to keep on going and have fun, and NOT THINKING ABOUT results. As long as you have input and make it fun, it should not matter for you that you do not see obvious results. Just keep on going… and results will come in the most amazing way and probably when you expect them the least.

With my first child, she showed her ability to read at about 12 months, reading random complicated flashcards. Then she decided that she did not want to show what she knew, but we continued with Little Reader, because it gave her great phonics foundation and vocabulary. Then around 3 yo, she started to read on the 1st grade level overnight. One day she would not read to us and would show the wrong answers, the next day she took a simple chapter book and red it smothly and perfectly. She progressed rapidly after that and never went back.

The VERY SAME thing happened with my second child! We faithfully did LR, short and sweet every day, and showed lots of enthusiasm in dong it ourselves. He did not show his ability to read, excerpt for a separate words when he wanted :slight_smile: Then one day when he as 3 yo, he woke up in the morning and said Mommy I can read anything! And… he did!! He took his children’s Bible and red chapter after chapter outloud.

Ever since we can not stop them :heh:

Our youngest at 1.5 yo loves reading as well. Differently from two older ones he does not speak fluently ( both older ones spoke fluently in full sentences since 12 month), so I can not gauge accurately how much he is reading.

One other thing that we did a lot in addition to Little Reader was Native Reading – reading books together, while following with finger every word we are sounding out. We read a lot every single day more then 20 books per child. So that was a lot of native reading there.

We have not done anything else for reading, but all 3 of our LOs love reading and are good at it. And I am thankful for LR, that helped me to be consistent and for simple reading/bonding time together every day

you are doing great, so just continue and have fun!

3

Thank you Skylark for your answer, I know I shouldn’t look for results but it’s sometimes so discouraging when children lose their interest or don’t seem to learn anything! :confused:
We will keep reading and using LR (if she allows!!) and we’ll see how it goes :slight_smile:

4

We started our little boy on LR around 13 months and completed the program when he was about 2 years and still have no obvious ‘reading’ results. He is now 2 years 4 months. We ran through LR once a day and did little to reinforce it except for general reading and some letter play.

Despite the lack of ‘reading’, I have absolutely no regrets about spending the time of LR. My son had no spoken words, not even mum and dad at 18 months, and now his language development is just accelerating - he is ahead of many of his peers whereas he used to be behind. He is also explicitly curious about words, their definitions and pronunciation which is great for his vocabulary and which I directly attribute to LR . My husband, who was a skeptic of the program, is now a convert.

Furthermore, at the conclusion of LR my son also showed less obvious steps towards reading. He recognised that text represented words and pretended to ‘read’ (as an ex teacher I can confirm that 2ish is very early for this behaviour (though it might seem very late if you go by the kids on this forum!)). He also knew the sounds of several letters, again early if you compare it to averages.

We are now working slowly (and somewhat erratically) through the programs Reading Bear and Your Monster can Read. I am continuing to see progress. He knows the sounds of all is letters and is sometimes guessing words based on their first letter. He recognises a couple of sight words too. I am not pushing it too hard, and I am taking our son’s interest as the barometer for how much explicit reading teaching to do. My priority is that he enjoys reading and the learning process. If he takes longer than many of the kids on this forum I am not worried - it is just who he is.

I am also a great believer in latent learning. It might appear nothing is happening now, but when your child does start to read, it will probably be at a much faster rate than would otherwise be the case had she not been exposed to LR.

Lower your expectations and enjoy the process! You might be surprised about what your daughter is actually learning if you let go of what you think she should be learning.

5

And re the lack of interest, my son went through a period like that. It lasted about a month. I found a strict routine helped (every night at 6pm whether he watched 1 minute of it or we got through the whole thing), presenting it on a large T.V. and letting him move around (even if he did not focus completely) and being very animated & active when reinforcing words. Eventually he accepted the routine and within a couple of months he loved it. He often requests it now even though we have finished the program.

6

my son has little interest … he doesn’t like to sit in front of PC… how can i transfer into ipad or my other laptop? he is already 29 months and not talking …please help :confused: Big thanks for your help…

7

There are a couple of things that you can do.

*Always use subtitles when watching anything.

*Always follow the words with your fingers when reading.

  • Get books for the child’s specific interests. The book will make a difference in how engaged the child is during reading. I made a list of the books that my children enjoy from the library here, denverunschoolers.weebly.com/books.html

*Visit the library once a week and let your child pick the books they want with their own library card, ask the librarian for help finding and check them out by themselves. Being in charge and using the checkout is something that they will look forward to. When we’re busy, we still get books on the hold shelf rather than go inside. Going to a book store is a good change of environment and you can use it to discover new authors without buying anything.