My 19.5 month old DD knows about 100 sight words. She learned about 50 from the preschool prep series and most of the others from YBCR/Baby Signing time. She has since picked up some from LR in the last month too. Preschool Prep is supposed to be coming out with a phonics DVD this year, but no exact time frame has been given yet.
Currently, we watch a few phonics videos saved from youtube. YBCR’s Robert Titzer says that kids will being to infer the rules of phonics without specific phonics instruction, but I am not against teaching phonics at all. I’d like to teach both concurrently. DD knows her alphabet solid and will sing the phonics songs sometimes, but phonetic reading hasn’t “clicked” yet. I haven’t tried very many couplets with her yet (we’re on disc 3 or so of YBCR, I haven’t been 100% faithful with it). I’m not in a huge rush, but how long should I expect her to take to make the leap from sight words to phonics?
Like I said, we are using a few phonics videos with songs and we are also signing phonics in the bathtub when we play with letters. Are there any programs out there for phonics for toddlers that are actually worthwhile? I saw that Hooked on Phonics offers one but I don’t know how the quality is.
I assume LR will get to phonics somewhere down the road? They do show a bit of phonics on the TW DVD’s that we watch nightly before bed.
DadDude- You made my list and didn’t even know it. :laugh:
When I first started researching all of this early education stuff a month or two ago, I was overwhelmed and trying to make sense of it all. So while I’d wade through everything, I’d cut and paste snippets of ideas,words, websites, and links into a word document on my desktop. That way, I could go back later and look up the topics at leisure, instead of straying off course again and again in my quest for information.
Wouldn’t you know, Flesch Cards is on my list to revisit. I suppose now would be a good time to do that, thanks for the reminder.
Okay, I just read through the “how to” guide and set 1. Looks good. I need to pick up some card stock this week to print some other flashcards (TW phonics cards), so when I do I’ll print yours too. I guess we’ll start with the letter sounds first and then go from there.
Here’s a question- I assume you developed these pre-little reader…if I (or someone else) wanted to, they seem like they would translate pretty easily into LR files? Maybe I’ll look into doing that. It would be great for us. I am supposed to be practicing my Spanish after the kids go to bed, but I think I’ll try and make the time.
So, the Flesch Cards are phonetically organized, but if a baby only knows sight words, how are they supposed to make the leap? I’m still very confused.
Also, DadDude, I think the site you use forces people to download each set individually vs. in bulk unless you pay money.
Is there no way around this? It would be a big effort for me to download 70-80 files individually.
From what I can tell, each segment is set up to teach the same sounds. Set 1 is fat, rat, sat, cat, etc. First get the phonics sounds down pat with flashcards or whatever and then encourage sounding out the simple, phonetically similar sets of words from DadDude’s list.
Titzer says that some kids will naturally figure out phonics. After looking at the first set or two of flecsh-cards, I think it would be much easier to figure out phonics when learning such similar words in sets. Even if kids initially learned them as sight words, I think the repetitive similar sounding words would provide the necessary foundation for phonics.
I am not a pro and I am gearing up to do this myself, but that’s my initial understanding. They eventually will have to make the leap themselves, but these cards should help bridge the gap.
Yep, Pattern Phonics lessons start from Day 21 and carries on for the rest of the curriculum. You can also play any of the phonics Categories directly from the Categories panel and selecting any of the phonics lessons.
Someone (was it Gloria?) actually already did translate the cards into powerpoints–don’t know about LR. I think you can find them here somewhere–don’t know if they were all done.
mom2ross asks: “if a baby only knows sight words, how are they supposed to make the leap?”
I’m not sure I understand the question. When we started with this, my boy (then 22 months) didn’t know any words (except maybe “go” and “dog”).
If the question is a general one about how babies or toddlers can learn phonics from these cards, the idea is that they infer the rules more easily because the cards follow more obvious patterns. I’ll explain more in my essay, probably.
“Also, DadDude, I think the site you use forces people to download each set individually vs. in bulk unless you pay money. Is there no way around this? It would be a big effort for me to download 70-80 files individually.”
Ugh, it just requires that I figure out a solution and then execute it…
That’s pretty much it. The only significant difference between what we did and what Doman recommends is that we organized words into phonetic sets instead of based on subject matter.
Nadia, I did find them a few days ago and we started with set 1. I also figured out how to do the voice recording on my computer, I haven’t figured out how to make a new LR program yet, haven’t really tried yet, I’m sure it’s fairly straight forward. I am considering trying to convert them into LR format so I don’t have to read them aloud.
We started with the YBCR and our son made the inuitive leap in phonetics without help. Not sure why it clicked but one day we were just writing words of things we could see and he read two completely new words, he didn’t sound them out, although I guess he must have, but he read two words that I know he had not been exposed to before. He was about 17 months old at the time. We also use the lyric language german dvd and this has the alphabet on it, however, he started reading new words before I ever heard him name a letter.
My understanding of children learning phonics is that they will self teach, much like they do when learning to talk and they work out the grammatical rules for themselves of course the structure of the English language doesn’t make this any easier for the little dears.
The important thing is that if you want them to understand that words starting with ‘b’ start with the ‘buh’ sound then they will need to be exposed to multiple words ‘b’ . I think structuring the words into similar groups would help a child make these connections earlier but the more importantly I think they need to see it happen in many circumstances in order to make that leap of understanding.
So, I’m starting to feel like the YBCR DVDs hold the key to expanded word recognition.
When I read about it, though, it sounds nearly identical to LR.
What’s the main difference?
-To be honest I only got the Little Reader and Little Maths trials yesterday, my son however, cried and cried when we turned them off, despite having been allowed to do several lessons at once. As a result I can’t comment very much on the differences except from my first impressions.
The Your Baby Can Read DVD series has a much more limited vocabulary of words and stops abruptly never moving forward to sentences and books. Being on a DVD it is completely rigid and unchangeable.
The lessons are between 25 and 40 minutes The end of each lesson has a word games section that’s supposed to be used once in a while, asking the child to point to one of two words and pointing out rhyming words and stuff.
This was the best part of the DVD, my son used to get really excited about it. There are only five lessons and these are repeated twice a day for a month before moving onto the next lesson. There is a mix of words and songs, all in all it’s okay quality and the fifth dvd doesn’t introduce anything new as such, but my son loved it and learned from it so I count it as a good investment.
I think the intense repetition created quick results (we noticed obvious word recognition from our son two weeks after starting him), though we didn’t really stick to the twice a day for a whole month thing as it would have driven him bonkas. We could always tell when they were starting to bore him and we’d move on then, once he’d done them all we started letting him choose which one he wanted to watch. I also think the word games were useful thing like showing the word ‘wet’ and replacing the ‘w’ with a ‘p’ very visually had to have helped with the phonics understanding, because he liked them so much we let him watch them every time, it was giving him such obvious pleasure that I couldn’t turn it off.
Looking back I would have liked to have used YBCR in conjunction with LR and our other homemade games, I think this would make a very strong combination.
We like it and use it, it’s part of our daily routine. Although I feel that it’s really “low budget” my kids like it and it works to build sight reading skills. Not sure on the phonetic reading yet.
My son (6 months) has kind of picked up the tail end of it, we are on the 4th disc with DD and he just watches along with her although her has not done the starter disc through disc 3 yet. I haven’t decided if I am going to restart YBCR from the beginning with my son. I might, but I might do it when he’s a little older and DD isn’t around so she doesn’t have to sit through it all over again.
i got the leapfrog phonics after reading a post on this forum. and man, does it work!! i bought all 3, the letter factory, the talking words factory and the complex words complex (or the word caper or something). within 2 weeks of watching the letter factory she knew the sounds of about 10 letters when you showed them to her and with the rest of the videos she now knows how to sound out words… she doesn’t quite get that you have to say them fast, but she knows the sounds of the entire alphabet including long and short vowels. she is 16 months!
yes, i have been working with her to reinforce everything but to me it was all leapfrog.
i have also been using the dr. jones reading and math since they teach reading from the beginning and not just sight words. i have to say the combo is great, because the leapfrog phonics have a great easy way to teach the rules of reading (at least the basics) that is very easy to understand. i will say dr. jones is VERY left brain, but with all the right brain stuff i do i’m not going to worry about it. this has really made a difference in her interest as well.
just my 2¢. hope that helps everyone!
take care,
the doc :clown:
THANK YOU for sharing that! We have them, but have only watched them a couple of times. I thought the animation and storyline would be over her head. I skip to the part on the letter factory where the letters start making sounds. I’m have to add it to our regular rotation. She has upper and lower case letters down pat and seems to know some of the sounds, but not quite how to sounds words out yet.
Glad to hear you had success with it, we will give it a shot!
Glad to know you made the cross over the phonics. I think this is a big step for total reading sucess. Thank for letting us know sbout the Leap Frog program. Congrats Tracy
yes… do skip over the beginning story bit and go right to the meat of the video. they are long, and i let her roam around the the den and play with toys, the dog, etc. while its on… and she still got it! look up dr. jones, too!
good luck!
the doc :clown:
My daughter started watching YBCR at 9 or 10 months and was reading phonetically at 21 months. She is proof that kids can figure out phonics for themselves.
However, my 2.5 year old watched for more than a year and sight reads a little and can’t do phonics at all. So, YBCR does not work for all kids. She has lost interest in the DVDs, so I have been doing the Little Reader trial. Hopefully, this will work for her.
My older daughter is now 5 and is a really really fast reader. I think early reading may produce significantly faster readers based on what I see with my older child. I really hope that my younger daughter will learn early enough to have the same benefit.
