My 19 month old knows about 40 or so sight words, and is reading some CVC words (though prefers sight words and will sometimes look away if the next word isn’t a sight word–we are starting flesch cards).
I wrote a little book for her which she likes to read.
I’m just curious about the different ways to progress from words to readers. Does your child know every single word by sight before you hand them the book? Are they sounding out any words, or has that either not been introduced or the child has moved past that before reading the book? Or do you share reading the book, letting the child read the words he/she is familiar with while you read the rest until he/she can do it on his/her own? And how do you get there? Explicitly teaching those words as well, or do they pick it up through your reading together?
I know there cam be as many answers as there are people and I’m not looking for the way, just gathering ideas.
My daughter couldn’t jump from words to books, so I transitioned her with those big long sentence strips. They even sell them at the dollar tree although I liked the quality from the teacher store better. Then, when you are reading short readers, leave off the last word (especially fun if they are rhyming words), and then eventually, the last two words, or other random words in the book that you KNOW that she knows.
Do you have the BrillKids books? They are really good for this IMHO and helping string together sentences. I’ve had them with my son and never really had to do the sentence strips with him, we use the books and they are great!! My DD still reads them and loves them but is reading a higher level now.
I do have the brillkids books, we read them everyday. The Friendly Crocodile is her favorite.
BUT…she doesn’t really know Little Reader words yet. :(. Seriously, I don’t know what I’m doing wrong! I’m very hopeful though and still trying. She’s learned almost all of the Meet the Sight Words words (and we just got the last one a few days ago). We watch the videos, sometimes with the cards out to play with, use the cards, and the ipad apps. She’s rock solid on 90% of them. She will read them when I handwrite them as well. I sometimes point out those words in brillkids books with mixed success (she knows them, just doesn’t always want to read them during a book ;)).
I’ve just recently scrapped doing the Little Reader curriculum as is. I know I need to get more flexible with how I’m using it. Right now, I’m just doing “Action Words 1” and I’ll just stay there until she gets them. We watch this segment several times a day, use the cards to match pictures to words, and I’ve added them to the “Little Speller” app on my phone, write these words on our chalkboard easel or Magna doodle throughout the day, etc. I’m hoping that her success with preschool prep has taught her how to learn words which will spill over into Little Reader. It’s such a fantastic tool, I want it to work for us.
She definitely loves putting things in things, so perhaps I’ll make her a little shoe box with slit in it to put her word cards in after reads them. And then work up her stamina?
I taught words then strung them together to make phrases and sentences. Then I took sentences from books that we had all the word cards for and let her read a reader one sentence per day by sticking word cards on the wall - this also taught left to right and top to bottom. She was still too young (about 20 months) to cope with the word size in books and also didn’t have the concentration to read much more than one sentence. Then we would point out words in books - usually words in bigger font and she’d read them and finally I gave her a reader with few words and we read it page by page together after checking with word cards that she did actually know all the words. These days (she’s nearly four now) we read a page each one at a time. She is still not reading independently. I have done some phonics with her and continue to do so - I will probably push this more in the coming year as she is sight reading nearly everything and still battling to work out new words by herself.
Do you have the Little Reader flap cards? What I did with my kids is do the daily LR curriculum, and then move through the categories one at a time to mastery of all the words. I was a bit more focused doing this with my daughter but my son has been exposed a lot earlier so I am a bit more laid back with it (read: lazier lol ). Anyway, I would print out one category per week typically to put in the flap binders and then just do the daily electronic curriculum. I liked that they are still exposed to the flashing but they also have hands on flap cards to manipulate and be exposed to until mastery. Sounds like you are taking a similar path now. The curriculum is still wonderful for increasing vocabulary even though I believe my daughter can read all of the words now, I play the curriculum for DS still when DD is around because I know she is still benefiting from the vocabulary & the flashing.
I forgot to add, meet the sight words is just WONDERFUL because it’s nearly impossible to string together a sentence without them. So pick some nouns in Little Reader to focus on too so you can make some sentences/sentence fragments when she masters them. You of course can do couplets first if necessary. I would probably do colors and animals and include the sight words she knows, like…
The cat is orange.
The bear is brown.
The bear is by the cat.
The goat was by a horse.
Go play with the dog.
I would draw tiny little pictures (very simple) in marker next to the sentence that provided clues too, and she loved that.
Yes, I’ve got the flap cards too. For whatever reason this time I tried something different and am using single cards (not flap ones) to do matching instead.
Animals and colors next sounds great. I chose actions first because I wanted to focus on doing ASL also (thinking it’d help her with reading also), and I didn’t really need prep work for that category. lol
Hearing your little ones did sentences next is helpful!
My son read sentences since he was around 2 years and 3 months old but did not really like reading the whole “book”. We did Peter and Jane. He read a few pages , then stopped and tried to get me to read to him. He knows all the words but is not interested in reading them himself.
Recently, I made books about him, and his belongings. He loves them very much and wanted to read them over and over again. They are just simple books with simple sentences but full of things he loves such as me (of course lol), his dad, his brother, his lovie, and lots and lots of cars.
These are some of the sentences in pne of his “personalized” books;
I have a friend.
His name is Raf.
Do you see him?
Raf, where are you? (Showing his toy giraffe hidding under the blanket).
Oh, you are on the table (Picture of his giraffe on the table)
Now, you are under the table
Oh, you are in a box.
Now, you are out of the box.
Come on, Raf.
Let’s Play
That’s a homemade book for my 2.9 years old son. lol
Maquenzie - sometimes it’s not that he can’t read it. It’s that he doesn’t want to yet. For the longest time, my son could read but he preferred for me to read to him. Slowly but surely he started to read on his own. Now he doesn’t want me to read to him. When I offer, he says, “I can read it myself.” But when I read to his brother, he’ll listen in.
I did do partial reading with him. For instance, I read most of the words but leave the last word in the sentence to him. Then it became one sentence each. Then one page each. If he didn’t want to read, I wouldn’t push him, I’d just read to him.
Ditto. Now when I offer to read to DD, the majority of the time she hands me a book and says “Here, this is for you” and gets another to read herself LOL. However, there is still much to be gained by exposure to new vocabulary through being read TO, so I like to let her use www.mightybookjr.com and I am looking into www.readinga-z.com too. She is happy to use those & likes to manipulate the mouse herself while reading along. She still loves LR too, but it’s just another way to strengthen & reinforce reading skills.
ETA: I meant their other site, www.razkids.com, the other one has printables.
