Here is a video of my 4 year old reading today. He is reading “Kidnapped” by Robert Lois Stevenson. He just grabbed it from our book shelf I think he though it looked exciting.
Excellent! Bravo!
Of course now you must tell us all how he learned to read and when he started and whether or not he understands such advanced materials and if not, what you’re planning to do help develop his comprehension of what he’s reading.
Way to go! At what age did he start reading? What did you use ( Doman, YBCR, Brillkids, Monkisee etc)?
We started late in the game when it comes to reading but I’m impressed with what my 4.5 yr old can do in such a short time. I started with YBCR at the end of Dec 31st and she is slowly reading at about a 1st grade level now in Feb.
We started with Doman quite young. When he was 18 months old he could read maybe 100 words, then we had some disruptions and weren’t consitent with his program and he forgot many of them. I continued with him although we did eventualy switch over to little reader. We tried YBCR with him too. I would have to say for my little guy however he didn’t end up internalizing many words from those.
What ended up working for us was “The letter factory” for letter sounds followed by “The Ordinary Parents guide to teaching reading” I started that at a little more than 2 and it was perfect for him. We combined it with Bob books and early readers (one a day from the library). We then just advanced to more and more advanced readers as his confidence grew. For a while he had an adversion to small print but now he will read anything. The more he reads the morehe just recognizes words at a glance so in the end I think all readers are “whole word” readers, but with the skill to use phonics to break down new words.
He does understand it, but we have been doing advanced read alouds since he was a baby. And we do a lot of reading from non-fiction sources for background understanding. He will ask me questions like what is a kiln? What is it used for? Where is this place? At 2 and 3 he loved the “Little House” books and “Around the World in 80 days”. We also read a lot of historical fiction like those books by Henty. Right now he is on a bit of a Harry Potter kick and we read that alternating pages.
We just talk about things as we read and he stops frequently to ask questions about words he doesn’t understand. As far as continuing to advance his reading, I have a list of progressively advancing books that I created from a bunch of online resources. I wanted him to be exposed not just to incresingly difficult reading level but also classical literature (including what I consider to be classical childrens literature) because I think it is important to be culturally literate as well. So we have this list and we just do one book (or sometimes several) at a time and just move down it. Of course he also does a lot of free reading especially right before sleep.
Here is him reading almost exactly one year ago:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P0tBmWZvi1o
Ahh, yes. We have the Leap Pad Videos too. They are fun. They were very helpful for my 2nd and 3rd daughters. They learned to read phonetically. They did help my 4th with learning her abc’s. But she didn’t seem to interalize the reading ones though like my 2nd and 3rd daughters did. She has done well with the YBCR, Monkisee and LR though. She seems to be figuring out the phonics pattern this way. So she’s going a little backwards I guess. :laugh:
I had almost forgotten my Bob books. I pulled them out and Maggie loves them. My books are much older. I bought them for my oldest about 7yrs ago. Yours look to have color in them.
I haven’t tried OPGR, but have used 100 EZ lessons and The Reading Lessons with my girls.
Yes I think every child is different. That is why we’ve tried a bunch of things, because when you are teaching a young child you need to find a way to make it accessable and understandable to them. And I think different things click for different kids and you just have to keep trying until you figure out what will work for your child. For instance, I had heard great things about 100 easy lessons, and know many people have used it very successfully, but the whole “say it fast” thing and the different way of writing sounds was frustrating to my son.
Also, I forgot we did use preschool prep and he learned all of those words as sight words at age 2 so maybe the presentation worked better for him
Only two of my daughters took to 100 EZ lessons. Those were my 2nd and 3rd.
My oldest would have benefitted from early reading. She was starting to read at the age of 3 and then I started with 100EZ lessons with her at 4.5 and she did well until a certain lesson and she hit a wall for a very long time
I think something like YBCR would have helped her at the time. It wasn’t until I introduced whole words and phonics that she finally picked up with reading at the age of 9! I feel bad that it had took me so long to figure it out. Plus I had no knowledge of early learning at all. I had no clue. She’s 13 now and reads at grade level but is the world’s worst speller (mind you she did have phonics instruction).
My youngest was following the same path as my oldest. It wasn’t until last year that I heard of YBCR. It was the first time I ever saw the commercial for it where we live. So it wasn’t until we saw YBCR last year at Walmart did I finally pick it up. I was trying to use 100 EZ lessons with her and it just wasn’t working with her at all. I felt like I was reliving my oldest daughter’s reading experience. LOL
I’ve been using a combo. Maggie got tired with the YBCR. So we’ve moved on to Monkisee and Brillkids. She loves the combination of having video, flashcards and being on the computer. Sometimes she just wants to watch the tv, sometimes she wants to be on the computer cuddled up with me, and sometimes she just wants to do the flashcards. I think at this age having a combination of things its great!
Its always amazing how one thing works for one child and not the other…and it can be all in the same family too!
Congrats. He is reading so well. You must be so proud. My daughter is almost 4 now but isn’t even quite up to Blaise’s feb 2010 video. She knows many sight words, and is only starting to sound out basic words. My biggest obstacle is that she often she doesn’t want to formally practice her phonics and sight words with me. How did you overcome that obstacle? Actually I have another obstacle I think I cause some stagnation. I don’t retire old sight words. Consequently I have a long unmanageable sight words list and I’m slow to add new ones. Maybe I should drop off some and make that final push to get up to at least the first 100. I’m so slow that she knows many sight words before they make it onto our list. I use Little Reader to wordflash. Seeing Blaise’s progress makes me think I’m not doing the best job getting to the reading fluency stage. In addition to Preschool Prep, did you actually flash sight words too? I have the Kid 2020 sight word videos, but they are just too psychedelic. My daughter didn’t like them. Once Blaise knew many sight words did you stop practicing them. I get afraid to drop stuff in case she forgets. Maybe I’m the root of our stagnation. I’ve got to learn how to forge ahead. My daughter know her letter sounds and is working on her vowel sounds. She can figure out the end and beginning consonant in unfamiliar words, but the vowels sounds are difficult. How did you get from last year’s reading stage to his current reading level. Did you focus mostly on just reading books? My daughter plays on starfall but she does the same stuff repeatedly so isn’t learning anything new there. She likes to be in control so she does “Teach Me Kindergarten” by herself on the iPad. She is learning new things there and is teaching herself addition and subtraction with it. She also plays a telling time game by herself. But it is hard to teach yourself to read without help so I’ve got to rethink my game plan. Sometimes I think this kid is learning to read in spite of me. Any motivating advice would be appreciated. Maybe I should start a thread for other stagnating parents like me to support one another. I hope I’m not the only one.
Anyway, once again congrats. I’m jealous and your son is brilliant.
Lori
I’m not sure how the orignal poster does it but I retire old words from my flashcard list. Once my daughter shows me that she knows them I put them aside. I don’t ever not bring them back out though. The easiest way that I’ve found to practice the old words without her realizing it is to read books. I found the book Green Eggs and Ham , Cat in the Hat, to be awesome to practice sight words. My daughter practices them without her even realizing it at all. Bob books are another great way to practice those sight words they already know.
I make it sort of a “mandatory” thing that my daughter at least sit with me twice a day no matter what time of the day it is to sit and read with me. I make it exciting by letting her pick some of her books off the shelf that she can read. I have her read them to me. Some books may have words she doesn’t know but that’s okay. I just read those words and have her read the ones she does know. Its okay to let them read easy books over and over. It develops their fluency but you do need to challenge them a little bit more at a time. Sometimes we can read for a while ( which is usually at night) and sometimes its just for a few minutes (which is more likely to happen during the day).
I continue to use the Brillkids with her too. We’ve only been at this learning to read for two months so far and my daughter pulled out her 3rd sister’s 1st grade 1st year reader and read the first three stories in it with very little trouble. Thing is I need to work on her comprehension as she’s focusing more on the words she is reading more than what is going on in the story. Which I guess I need to start a thread on that one too. :biggrin:
Its really easy to stay stuck on the words they already know because you don’t want them to lose all that they just learned. I think if you follow up with story books that they can continue to practice the words they already know. So that way you can just keep moving on.
I’d like to know what the original poster has done as well.
In all honesty his reading really took off once we started “The ordinary parents Guide to Teaching reading”. What we would do was one lesson a day and then initially one Bob book a day. We would keep repeating that Bob book until he became fluent. After he finished maybe the first set of books we started adding in library easy readers. We started with the level one books and then made flash cards for any words I knew he wouldn’t be able to sound out phonetically yet. At the same time we had a little box that holds notecards that is full of our flashcards. Our flash cards consisted of:
- Meet the sight words words
- Words that he wouldn’t know from the books he was reading
- We also at some point had some “Flesh cards” in there
So everyday after preschool we would go through the flash cards. Sometimes I’d flash and he’d read them to me and sometimes I’d let him “teach me” by flashing the words to me and teaching me. If I flashed them we’d play a game where if he got them right he would put them in a pile in front of him and if I got it right (i.e he got it worng and I told him the answer) it’d go in front of me. Then we’d count at the end and see who won. There would be days when he wasn’t into it but we still sat down and did at least a few and tried to find a fun way to do them.
I think if they know the words well the best thing to do is retire them. However for the sight words I really made sure he knew them through lots of repitition. Then you just have them read a lot and steadily increasing the difficulty. There may be times when it seems like no progress is being made, but just keep chuging away because when you look over a long term there will be gains and also sometimes they will just make leaps. There were times when we would switch off pages or even paragraphs in an attempt to build endurance, or I used more advanced books but put them on my Nook so I could use larger font.
Also something we did which really helped and also increased his love of reading was to let him have the hour before bed as free reading time where he lay in his bed with a pile of books and read them. We started this even before he was really reading.
Thank you, Linzy, for your detailed description. I’m going to try your suggestions. I have a few Bob Books too. We go to the library but I need to work harder at having the time to pick out the right type of books. Lately she is difficult at the library so I may need to go by myself while she is at preschool. It sounds like you were very consistent. I need to get her reading a bit everyday and practicing her sight words. She gotten into a bad habit of refusing. I retired my old stale sight word list last night, and started a new list. Maybe I will even check out “Meet the Sight Words” and “The Ordinary Parents Guide to Teaching Reading.” It is good to hear that sometimes you felt that there wasn’t much progress. Maybe she is too busy processing stuff to demonstrate new skills. Thanks for your advice and support.
Karma, Lori
Lori, you will do great. Of course I have been frustrated and thought that we stopped progressing, but definately consistentsy is the key. I really liked the green light readers for early reading books. Or the Mo Williams books. Once they get a little more independent there is Henry and Mudge. It’s great to stick with series because they tend to use the same words so they become really familiar and build on each other.
Linzy,
That’s a great idea to stick with one series. She does love an Elephant & Piggie Book that we just got from the library. She can read most of the words in it too. I will get more of them. I’ve getting more consistent lately because I’m feeling inspired by you. I’ve already revamped our sight word list. She loves the new list and we are reading daily. I will look for the green light readers
Thanks again, Lori
Cool. I can’t wait for my kid to learn how to read. He’s just nearly 1 year old and the he only knows a few words. :biggrin: