How do you explain 'complicated/confusing concepts to young children?

[tory79]

This is going to sound really stupid, and I know it's primarily due to the perfectionist in me, but I'm struggling with how to explain certain things to ds.

He's 2.1. Lots of words but bad pronunciation. Very bright in other ways, can count from 0-12, can identify all the letters of the alphabet (upper and lower case) and make many of the sounds. Can spell some simple words like teddy and his name.

What I'm struggling with is how to explain things like eye not being i, or words that sound different to the phonic sounds, or how 1 and 2 is 12 but also 3, things like that. I feel like I tie myself up in knots trying to give lengthy explanations of things that he probably couldn't care less about but I don't want him to learn it wrong!

Am I being completely ridiculous or are there easy ways to manage these kind of things?

Err he's 2 - why on earth do you need to teach him 1 and 2 can be 12 or 3? Or that the letter i can have several sounds? Particularly as you say he couldn't care less about it....

He's driving it, he's fascinated by letters and numbers. When I say he couldn't care less I don't mean about letters and numbers themselves! He bloody loves them.

He knows all the phonic sounds and can match them to all the letters but there are some words that don't follow those rules and then if I'm sounding them out I end up not knowing what to say when they don't actually make the word.

just say that there are different sounds for the same letter symbol.
And lots of different symbols to make the same sounds.

My elder DC, especially Ds1 followed this pattern of interest in number/letter work BUT I think it's really important not to focus narrowly on this, give your DC the benefit of a wider range of interests.

He's clearly a bright lad, get him outside and looking at the world around him - the names of plant, the names of trees, birds, what they eat, where they live, why it rains, what are the clouds he will suck it all up like a sponge!

I think the best gift you can give him is to give him a love about learning EVERYTHING! The writing/reading/counting are important of course but there is plenty of time for it (I not discouraging you from keeping up with doing that, but make it part of a bigger picture of just enjoying learning about the world iykwim).

What the others said. He's too little to be focusing on phonics concepts yet - leave that for school. He's clearly interested in them and will drive his own learning there - you need to present him with opportunities to do other things that he's maybe not thinking of. Also, a lot of bright two year olds are very good at learning the names of numbers and letters etc by rote but are simply too young to understand what it all means.

You can tell him that some of the letters are magical.. especially the letter e and do the three letter-four letter thing.. cap to cape for example and how it changes the sound of the a.. calling it the magic e works because that is how they will teach him at school too, and that's where the importance lies.. using the same language that will be used at school .. it doesn't matter that he doesn't get it, or to some would seem too young, if he hears the words often enough they become normal to him.. lucky you for having a child that wants to learn the phonic sounds, my three year old can recognise them all but that's it .. no more interest than that, they all have their thing at this stage.

I don't think teachers have referred to magic e for donkeys years!

They do at my kids school.

You can't. If you're desperate to teach him phonics - and honestly unless he is really gifted, he won't have the processing skills to be able to decode whole words yet, so stick to letters - but if you really want to, then buy the Jolly Phonics teacher's workbook and it will explain how to go through the system. But I think it will be wasted because he won't be able to take it in yet.

You can't teach him that 1 and 2 is 12 and 3 because it isn't. You can teach him by recognition that when he sees 1 and 2 written down next to each other it is called 12, by every time you see a 12, calling it twelve. But most children can't tell the difference between (e.g.) 12 and 21 until they're closer to 4. You can help him see that 1 thing and 2 things make 3 things by encouraging him to put one thing with two things and counting, but, again, he won't get the concept yet.

The first stage in phonics teaching is getting children to differentiate between sounds. If his pronunciation isn't clear (which is TOTALLY NORMAL) then he may find this difficult. But some things suggested in the book I have (because we live abroad and DS is not in an English speaking school) are things like - go on a "listening walk" where you tell each other all the different sounds you can hear. To go through your kitchen cupboards and shake the different cans/packets and see if he can hear which is which without looking.

Then it is things like animal noises, sound effects in songs etc, to get them used to making different sounds with their mouths. This is all before they even start to teach the phonic sounds and they don't go for the whole alphabet at once, it's in stages of about 4-6 sounds at a time.

Lots of good advice here, but I would get the Dr seuss books and read to and then with him, they're built round phonics, and the jolly postman, and also Richard scarey word books, and open his eyes and mind to things Nd sounds and ideas.

I'd also get lots and lots if counting books from the library, and nursery rhymes. Children love rhyme. And counting becomes a game you play.

Playing I spy, with the easiest letters, is good too.

And talk, talk, talk.

Just explain- it will go in, though may take a while for full comprehension. Lengthy explanations are fine, really.

I just told mine that some words have the same sounds, but different spellings because of where we got the word from, i.e. French, German, etc.

Can he really count objects to 12, or is he just parroting 1-12 in order?

No, he can count to 12 properly. He understands that 0 is a number and o is a letter, he can identify numbers of things out of sequence and without counting through (eg can look and say there are 4 of xxx without counting 1-4)

He knows all the phonics sounds, he knows that e is eh and eee, the o is oh and o etc and can pick them all out as both upper case and lower case.

We have dr Seuss and he loves it, knows some go it off by heart already.

I think also I'm really struggling with his level of pronunciation in comparison to how much else he seems to pick up eg he knows all these things above, and yet hardly has any 2 syllable words....

The pronunciation is hard for them when small though, particularly before all their teeth are in place. It will come.

I would relax if I were you. He'll get there!

Just seriously, stop worrying about it. Sometimes they are bright or interested and want to do things ahead of their ability. You just have to manage their frustration, reiterate what they can do and steer them towards something else. I'm getting it with DS who is now 5. He has literally just got the hang of writing very phoenetically - he will write "Aylufu" for "I love you" but he wants me to help him write little stories in books or letters to people.

Now, again, he can sit down and remember to put spaces between the words and work out which sounds might fit in this word and write probably an appropriate amount to fit in a birthday card if I sit there and help him. But trying to do anything longer, he starts to get frustrated to the point that he will scream in rage and screw the paper up that he's just taken 20 minutes to write and shout that it's all my fault for helping him wrong and try to hit me. Because he isn't actually ready to do this at all, and in fact it's not helping him when I say yes I will help you write a story. So I am in the position now of avoiding this even though he wants to do it and I have ordered some workbooks online which are more for his level, which I will go through with him when he says he wants to do some writing practice. Sometimes as well as encouraging them you have to manage their expectations of what they actually can do, and pull them back a bit. It's like trying to run before you can walk - it ends in tears!