Here is the latest video of my 3 year old reading. He has a quiet voice, but is a fast reader.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WfZ0hcFkTCk
He currently is doing reading eggs, reading bear, The Ordinary Parent’s Guide to teaching reading, The Peter and Jane books and then whatever fun books he wants to read at night to himself before sleep.
Mason is so cute. Great job Linzy. He does have a quiet voice, but I love how he uses his finger to aid him.
(Is he wearing a Batman suit replete with ears?)
Yes cape and ears, he has the mask pulled back. It was an Easter present and he hasn’t removed it since. He thinks it makes him invincible.
Awesome job! How old was he when he first started to read? How old was he when you first started teaching him?
Quite honestly we started almost from the start, maybe 3 months, but very casual at first and then increasing once he turned 1. Before 2 we did lots of LR, preschool prep company DVDs, Leap frog’s “The letter factory” and “Talking word factory”, Readingbear.org and Starfall.com.
I have tried to document, so here is a summary of our progression:
Here he is at 22 months he just was recognizing letters and knew their sounds:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=PJOV5nJon6M
At 2 we started readingeggs.
Here he is at 24 months sounding out words:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l4x_UygVdcI
At 2.5 we started “The ordinary parent’s guide to teaching reading”.
Here he is at 2 years 9 months:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=utDz19_5RNU
And right around 3 we discovered the Peter and Jane books, which I have found are amazing, too bad we didn’t know about them with our elder son.
Here is 3yrs 2 months:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ho5rJKTAPBo
And then you saw where he is today.
He is doing really well - well done! Its great to see his progression too.
Its great to see his progression. He seems like he’s on track to be reading as well as Blaise was by around 4, doesn’t he?
Just curious, how would you have used Peter and Janes books with Blaise if you had known about them?
Just as additional readers or is there some other component to them besides just the books? Or are they a series that progresses in reading level evenly which would’ve thus made it easier for you to “step up” Blaises reading material as he was maturing. If I recall, your older son was using Bob books at 3 and reading from “Kidnapped” with fluency and comprehension by 4yo, yeah?
Would Peter and Jane readers really have made a difference in his progression or do you just think that they are just good childrens books you would’ve liked to share?
Another video that proves EL works and that very young children can read if exposed early to reading. Thank you for sharing your son’s progress. You have just inspired this mom to be more consistent with doing EL at home 
I used the Peter and Jane books with my eldest and have just started them with my younger child who is 26 months. For me they teach/enable sight word reading at a level not found in phonics books - they enabled my DD to read books while still doing early phonics as another activity and then to combine the two as she moved up in the readers was very easy and rapid because she wasn’t sticking on the most common words used in children’s literature. I only taught her the words up to book 5 and from book 6 onwards she was able to work out any new word by herself.
With my younger child what I like best is that book 1a and 1b have very large type font which makes them easy for such a young child to read and there are also few words on each page. The initial books (1a/b) only have 16 words in them which means only a few sight words need to be known for the child to read the book. Finally as the books level up they keep repeating the words from the previous readers and the repetition is natural - because phonics readers are teaching phonics concepts there is less repetition of words. The feeling that children get from being able to read a real book helps a lot.
While I use Peter and Jane, I do have things I do not like about these books - they are still pretty old fashioned with very specific gender roles which my DD even asked about at age 3 without me commenting on it (why doesn’t Jane ever play with the boats?) The language in them is a bit stilted simply because they are using so few words and such specific words - however phonics readers to me are often more stilted and often it is hard to gain meaning out of certain phonics sentences whereas the meaning is perfectly clear in the Peter and Jane books when used with the illustrations.
I know they are very widely used - millions of copies have been sold and I think they have a good place in teaching toddlers to read - I would be much more wary with older children however. The Keywords Reading Schemes sold by ladybird are not all as good as each other - Sunstart I think contains too many words in the very early readers and the print is too small. There is another Keywords scheme sold by them that has cartoon illustrations and it is also not as clear as Peter and Jane however I have used it as supplementary reading simply because we had some available.
I did books 1-12 in the A series with my eldest DD and books 1-5 in the B series with her. She no longer needed Peter and Jane books after book 5, but they were comfortable and familiar for her and she enjoyed them so we continued. Because she was so little she was not able to do the C series (it has a lot of writing which she was not yet ready for) however I did cover some of the phonics with her later on as revision for another phonics programme we had done and she read some of the shorter pieces. I also did some of the sentence muddling (put words in the correct order to make a sentence) as she got older and I am now using these books also to teach spelling of some of most common words while also teaching spelling phonetically.
I don’t really have an opinion on what is better and what is worse when teaching reading - whatever works for your child is best, whatever they enjoy and whatever gets the job done. Peter and Jane are not good stories that I would want to share with my children - they are readers to teach reading. There are much better books to be sharing with your children, but they do get the job done of getting your child to the level of reading these better books very rapidly.
Can you mention those other books? They will help children that are starting to read?
Thanks.
Hi Linzy,
Congrats! He seems to like it and reads with an ease…sure you are having a good time together.
Thanks for the neat summary you have put together! This will help me a lot.
Looking forward to having more posts from you.
Hi Tanikit,
I have same question as 2010Bebes…What other books are helpful for kids who arejust learning to read?
Thanks.
I think I would have used the Peter and Jane books with my elder. We only use the a and b as the c are phonics and writing based and we use other, better things for that. What I like about them is that they only use the words that have been taught and then each word that they teach in a book is repeated like 20 times in that book alone to solidify it. They learn a few words each 1-2 pages and it is a very gentle progression. As the books get up in the 6-12 range they start having actual stories. They are maybe a little “old fashioned” with gender roles, but that is not important to us and actually my son doesn’t seem to pick up on it. I don’t think it is a big deal, they also let the kids go to the ocean by themself and go swimming or ride public transportation to the town to run errands. Also thinks that I wouldn’t necessarily do, but it is a look into another way of living, another time and another place.
I think he will end up being as good if not necessarily as voracious reader as his brother over the next year. It is a testimonial to the fact that this really works and can work with any child. My first son is obedient and determined, he always was up for a lesson, will do his best and won’t complain. He has always had an amazing stamina. My little one is much more contrary, he loses interest rapidly and has a much shorter attention span. Often we would only do 1-2 pages at a time. But approaching with different methods and doing several short lessons throughout the day I think will get us to the same place in about the same amount of time.