My son has been a reluctant reader. He never learned with whole words - partly because he went through several long phases of refusing to look at LR or other reading cards, partly because when he was interested I never managed to show it consistently for long. I think that might be why he kept getting bored with it, actually… though it may be because he thought that the sole purpose of the program was teaching animal sounds and once we passed those lessons he didn’t see the point lol
Anyway, now he has just turned three. He learnt his letter sounds about a year ago, but has refused all my attempts to teach him how to sound them together to read words. I know he knows the theory well enough because we’ve watched the leapfrog talking words/codeword capers dvds HUNDREDS of times over the last year and he memorized the letter sounds after a very few repeats of the letter factory dvd. He just never tried to sound anything out. He would sing the phonics rules songs but never apply them. No matter what I tried, I couldn’t get him interested in anything more than letter sounds.
Last week I decided to give Reading Bear a try. We tried a couple of months ago and he wasn’t interested. This time, he sat through the presentations - I started to get hopeful. We did one long presentation every day (no matter how bored he appeared to be getting, he wouldn’t let me close the window until he finished the whole set) and have now covered the short vowels except o (because the accent difference confused him too much) a couple of times each. At first he would squirm and appear uninterested (though he insisted he wanted to watch) and gradually over a couple of days he started to mimic the voice-over.
Within a week he started independently sounding out and reading CVC words. I am thrilled and hope that he’ll pick up all the other lessons this quickly! I’ve attached a video I sneaked of him while we were going through the short o presentation for the first time. He might be slow right now, but I’m proud of the way he figured it out by himself!
I’m impressed with the simplicity and efficacy of Rudolph Flesch’s word list… and of course, what DadDude has done with it makes it accessible for little ones and all the easier for children of all ages that are learning to read.
That’s wonderful news! Congratulations! We love Reading Bear too. We also love the new Pattern Phonics of LR which is now has a similar presentation to Reading Bear. Great products!
RB also has short video clips that you can play on devices. I put them in our iPod Touch for learning on the go.
Some questions for you, mothers who have used Reading Bear.
How old were your babies when they began to work with that fabulous programme?
Did you use it regularly?
Does not feel the baby overwelmed if s/he is seeing different language programmes per day? My daughter is beginning to accept to see other programmes and DVDs appart from LR and Learn to talk?
Is it a little dangerous to expose my baby two hours per day, sharing the time along the day? WTL is coming and I am thinking about the distribution of my time… At first, I thought only LR, … now no. There are so many interesting things to see, teach… It is amazing, parents… With babies??
Yay to Mummyroo and your gorgeous little boy - what a success. I’m THRILLED for you guys. :yes:
RB was what got us really on the road too - she learned very few words through whole-word methods but quickly learned to sound out after watching RB only a few times. I have come to the conclusion that she an auditory rather than a visual learner. We haven’t done RB for around a month and her progress has definitely slowed down. Better get back to it tomorrow.
This made my day. Thanks to everyone here for your enthusiasm and support of Reading Bear! Sorry it has taken me so long to show up–I’m very busy with various things, once again.
With distance from Reading Bear, I go back to presentations I made up to a year ago, and I’m finding I like it quite a bit. I regularly ask E. if he wants to use it, and we end up looking at it almost every day, although lately he’s been very much into the Reading Bear quizzes.
I use this with all my kids. I been periodically trying with my 4 year old and blending finally has clicked for him. I’m really excited he finally has gotten it and it didn’t take too much work. I been really sporadic about using it with him. I use it with my 2 year old too. She hasn’t gotten blending yet but she does enjoy watching it for short increments and I hope she eventually pick it up. My 6 year old is on the later presentations and it seems to be helping her too. Oh how I wish I started much earlier with her. I didn’t start working with her until she was 5 and it has been hard work. I took breaks with her since watched all the presentations before all 50 were up and then when they were up we were in the middle of moving but reading bear has been great for her. I really love reading bear and I am thankful it was created and there is a great free resource out there for reading.
Hello! I just want to ask if I can use the Reading bear with my 12 months old son? or is it too early? My son really loves reading books! We read books everyday! Thanks!!!
We were using it (the very first ones) when E. was 12 months, but there was no way to know if he was actually learning the phonics rules. I gather that some parents (some reading this, I’ll bet) used it around that age and had their kids reading phonetically much sooner than E. did. I didn’t use a systematic approach (so much of this per day every other day, so much of that, etc.) and I think that those who were, well, more committed than I (and my wife) were could have had more noticeable success sooner. Anyway, in our case, E. started saying the words consistently…I forget, but somewhere around 20 months. So we restarted going through at that time, with “short a,” and since then he’s been making faster and faster progress, although with breaks. Re breaks, we took about a 2-month break, in which we looked at it relatively rarely (3-4 times a week and rarely for long), then we got into it again a month ago and made another bunch of progress, then in the last week or two he’s been turning it down again and I don’t insist. As I explained in my essay (linked below), H. was precisely similar with the flash cards. He would have periods of enthusiastic progress, then lose interest for a week or a month.
I rather wish that someone else who has taught his/her child to read at a very early age would tell the story in detail, as I have done. We need more data. Nobody should draw any conclusions on the basis of my two sons, who share a lot of genes and have gone through similar programs with the same main teacher.
I guess my point is that it can’t hurt and might help to start on RB that young. At least, it will make it easier to get through the beginning stages later on. But don’t get your hopes up too high about rapid early progress. Even for parents in this forum, while it definitely happens, it seems relatively rare.
Fantastic! :yes: