Where we're at (22 months), input please!

Early Learning Teaching Your Child to Read
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I started teaching letter sounds informally (reading a tactile letter book and playing with sandpaper letters) starting around 6 months or so, perhaps a few times a week. I can’t remember the exact details.

I started little reader and other whole word videos at 11 months. We took one long break (few weeks) when she lost interest, and a few smaller breaks. She’s very interested now and we do the curriculum (2 lessons), the iPad app (her choice, usually ABC song, a story, and wild animals), and the flap cards (one category, waiting for mastery).

Around 15-17 months (I can’t remember), she knew all of her letter sounds. By 18 months, she could read some CVC words when we used moveable letters. She could blend fairly well from the beginning. We’ve also been using Reading Bear pretty religiously since it was available (2-4 short videos per day). As well as more.starfall play, and of course lots of reading of various books thought the day!

Sometime between then (18 months) and now (22 months), she’s learned about 50 sight words. Mostly from Meet the Sight Words videos. Some she has picked up from me writing them repeatedly when she asks (such as her name and favorite words). Those seemed the most effortless for her to learn! I’m not 100% sure she has learned any words from Little Reader at all, but she loves it right now, her vocabulary has grown, and I just feel like she’s around the corner from exploding with reading.

She’s been reading the same Meet the Sight Words reader (“Play It”) almost every evening for about a month. In the beginning, she read perhaps one or two words per page while I read the rest. Slowly, she’s been working up. She can now read the entire book, minus two words that trip her up. However, some evenings, she isn’t in the mood, and I don’t push. Even the nights when she does fantastic, she usually needs some gentle prompting. Assuming that’s normal considering her age. Again, when she isn’t into it, we put it away. She’s just now really getting the hang of predicting which word to read next. Top to bottom, left to right reading did not come naturally. (I have always text pointed since birth when reading aloud).

Today, we were going through some Meet the Sight Words cards, mixed with hand-written couplets and some little reader flap cards. I’ve noticed when reading these sight words, she doesn’t read them from left to right. She will sometimes guess words that contain those letters in a completely different order, etc. She doesn’t do this with reading bear (usually) or when we are playing with moveable letters to blend. Is this normal/ok? It would have bothered me while I was teaching my older child (using strictly phonics, while older). I’m new to this baby/toddler teaching! It’s exciting, but I’m not sure we’re doing everything right. :slight_smile:

Sound ok? Any suggestions?

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My daughter did that at about the same age and it freaked me out! She would “guess” words and she wouldn’t ever base the guess on the first letter or almost anything else that made sense to me - I thought, “oh no, I really have messed her up after all!!”, haha!

It was fine though, she just started doing it less and less. It came and went for a while. The only thing I ever read about it was in one of Sidney Ledson’s books, he says they just sort of get over-saturated and their little brains start trying new tricks. Or something like that - it was just a little blurb. It described what she was doing so well though that it calmed me down!

I think it was in Teach Your Child to Read in Just Ten Minutes. I didn’t ever use any of his methods, but it was an interesting read. In fact, I think you’ve inspired me to check his books out again!

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I would guess the majority of kids go through it, whether it’s at 5 years old or 1 year old. Word guessing was a phase for my daughter right around her 2nd birthday. I worked with her to “sound it out” if it was a CVC word or just by reinforcing the correct word if it was a sight word that wasn’t very early-phonics friendly (like “once” for example). If she mistook the word for a similar looking word, I would affirm her by saying "that word does look like of like the word "this,“doesn’t it? But see the -ng here, it actually says “thing.” That was a good try, though!” And then possibly show her a word that I KNOW she knows by heart so that can have some success. Don’t freak out though, it’s only temporary although it can instill a bit of panic for a moment! :slight_smile:

Also, I think that once they realize it doesn’t work very well, they may abandon it. As far as learning from LR, what worked really well with my kids was to do the daily curriculum and pull out 2 categories a week or so to print off and use until mastery. You could do the same by just showing 1 category after the LR curriculum lesson, but my kids really enjoyed the physical aspect of touching the cards in the beginning.

Hope that helps!
TmT