Learnt the alphabet - now what?

[Blumke]

Have any mums out there taught their kids to read? I mean the whole process. I live abroad and my son will learn to read in the local language at school but English is a different kettle of fish.

Letters are pronounced differently here and also the language is totally phonetic so basically the sticky process of teaching awful and irregular English spellings will be up to me.

I have taught my son - 3- the alphabet - but now I am looking for basic readers to teach him how to put sounds together. I have heard a lot about synthetic phonics. Are there any readers mums recommend?

What books would you recommend for the first steps? Grateful for any suggestions!

i would say just read him books for now he will start to learn what you are reading i think his a bit young to start reading in all honesty just break the words down b-e-d ,c-a-t my ds learnt to read by memorising the words and then he recognised the words his 4.9 and learnt from 4

we had lots of books to help reading but in all honesty he learnt his own way and then the rest came on when he went to school

i would just say keep reading the books to him and to be so anxious about getting him to read yet his still so young

dont be too anxious that should say

have you taught him the alphabet or the phonic alphabet

in uk schools they focus on phonics to develop reading skills which works with most, but not all, young children.

I think 3 is too early to teach reading - at 3 it should be child directed

just reading to him is good

but teaching phonics, ad there's lots of schemes you can google would be useful in a few years

Many schools over here use the ORT scheme - Biff and Kipper books. My two dss both used these in YR. There is also the Read Write Inc scheme. You can find special deals on the ORT books on Amazon and The Red Book website, also perhaps Book People website.

There are also Jolly Phonics DVDs and workbooks to practice writing out the letters. But children over here would not be starting this till YR - ie when they are 4/5.

The sight words - like "said", "the" "he" which cannot be pronounced phonetically are memorised, so you could get ds to maybe learn two a week - although he is still very young - but that will help him whem reading books as she won't be able to sound them out.

HTH