Teaching toddlers to read

[twiglett]

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our local library is brilliant. They have a fantastic children's section and we go every week - DS loves it there.

My ds joined the library at 5 days old and got a black and white picture contrast book to take home. We went to library story times from 2 months, and he really got into it from about 5 months.

We have bought lots of books, but borrowing expensive ones or gimmicky ones is great. I don't think you can be too young to join the library.

Gent, dd was about sixth months old when she joined the library. Ds has been going from birth!

We were also given free books when they were born, sponsored by IIRC Sainburys.

The great thing about the library is the range of books that it will open up for the child. We have loads of books at home, and the children have their favorate books that have been read and re-read. But having access to lots of books has to be a positive thing. And if you don't like the book, no problem, take it back and change it. And a wide range seems to be a real help when they are about a year and have the attention span of a gnat! And the trip out is all part of the experience, and the smell of the library, and a chat when we get there.

And the library will also have lots of board books, and well as older story books for them to 'grow into'. They grow up so fast, they quickly grow out of things.

I also joined the local toy library and that was great as well. Gave us the chance to borrow big toys that would wouln't have bought. And the kids loved it. We borrowed a load of stuff when we had a street party for the jubilee. We had a roundabout, two slides and two go-carts for the kids to play with (a group of us took out the things). We gave the kids a mini-park to play with (we also took along things). It was good fun

EmKaren, my DD sounds like HMB's DD. She has known her letters and souns since she was 18 months old and since starting school nursery at 2.5 has fallen in love with letterland. She started blending sounds on her own and after a post on mumsnet and a chat with her teachers have encouraged her all the way. She's very nearly 3 and has recently started to write her name and attempt to write other words she can recognise and "spell" such as sun, dog, moon. She started with a new childminder over half-term who was amazed that she's happiest "reading" and "writing", as she's perfectly happy I don't see any reason to discourage her. Just to be controversial, there have been suggestions that Germany has a lot to learn from the UK when it comes to "teaching" young children as standards have fallen behind those in comparable countries (e.g. the UK) and many kids entering schools now are thought to be lacking pre-school skills.

I didn't teach my eldest to read before school but once he was there I put a lot of work in and he soon was far ahead of the rest of the class. He was always a confident child at school in all ways and had no problems learning to read once he got there. However, my younger son is quite shy and I taught him to read before he went because I thought he would have enough to cope with being in the new environment. It has worked well because though the teacher thinks he has a communication problem (he is really shy with her and reverts to baby talk, despite chatting away ten to the dozen everywhere else!) she is amazed when he reads quite confidently and her pleasure in his reading is giving him more confidence to deal with the other aspects of school life. He started in January and isn't 5 until August, so he's quite young in his class. The eldest is an October child so he's quite old in his class. It may seem odd to teach the younger child to read when the older one might have been more ready, but this is partly down to the amount of time I had available at the time and also partly down to their different personalities - the younger child really needed the added confidence of already being able to read. Apparently there is a range of three years difference in reading readiness amongst different children so I really think it depends on the child and whether you think it will help them or not. There's no need to worry too much about it as long as you give them plenty of support once they get to school as I've seen children who are at school and can't get the hang of reading and they qet quite upset when everyone else is way ahead of them.

I have been reassured and convinced, we are off to the library on Ash Wednesday, perhaps I can drag dh along

thanks so much....hopes dd likes it

Like Emkaren I am also from the "continent" and have been wondering about the early start of reading in the UK. My ds (3y 4mo) has always liked books; he always asks me to read books with him. However he has no clue about letters(well, he knows some letterland characters..). So either I try to push him into learning the alphabet so he doesn't fall (further) behind the other children at nursery, or I carry on reading the books with him as before and risk him becoming one of the "upset children" as mentioned by debra64.
BTW I also lived for a short period in Norway where preschool children play much more outside than here but I suppose that can not be considered as preschool skills..

btw I did get ds a letterland book and some magnetic letters and I have printed out his name in big letters and stuck it on his bedroom door...(after all they can teach monkeys the alphabet)

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lailag, playing outside can teach pre-school skills, the problem (in many countries0 is that children are lacking co-ordination and the ability to concentrate. if he likes letterland characters that's great and if he's 3.4 he has another 18 months before he starts school so he's hardly likely to be "behind". i'm a bit sensitive about this as people assume that we must be awful "hothouse2 parents who don't let DD play, whereas actually letters/numbers have been play to her for a long time. TBH there are times when I wish she was more interested in climbing trees but se seems to follow her parents and be "bookish". Part of my DH's research is on animal models of learning, he will often point out that DD is currently on a par with a pidgeon.

lailag

I don't think it is so necessary to push him to learn the letters at this age. It sounds as if you approach suits him. Reading and enjoying the stories should be enough for now as he will ask for more in his own time. It is proven that they learn better through play than formal learning so there needs to be a balance.

Having said that one of the reasons our school (International school in Switzerland) has moved away from Letterland is that they felt kids identified too much with the characters and stories rather than the sounds. I have a friend who trained in UK as a primary teacher and she uses it with her daughters, but with the other materials too (tapes, videos, games etc) which expand the learning aspects and feels it is more appropriate for younger kids than Jolly Phonics.

There are still plenty of kids in ds' year group who are only now getting to grips with letter sounds at 5/6 and starting to read, as I'm sure there are also in the UK despite the "pressure" to learn earlier.

Still don't see why you have to learn the alphabet at such an early age to be able to concentrate later at school but anyway. As regards ds, compared to his "classmates" he is already behind but he doesn't care/know so I don't care either.
There are a lot of things I don't like about the UK school system but I suppose things have changed in my "home country" as well.

the cat in the hat books are brilliant, fun easy and very memorable
My son started reading these with me and was reading alone at age 4
Even now he is excellent reader.
Could be fluke though
I never taught him science and hes bloody brill at that too
LOL

Home reading schemes weren't readily available when I had my first three children so it was fun to buy them with no4 child. But she learned to read at exactly the same age as her siblings, which was about 5yo, the scheme made no difference at all. She's now 7 and reads a broadsheet newpaper for fun. When I had my older children, teaching by parents was positively discouraged (I remember being told to stop dd1 from writing her letters at home!) yet by the time dd2 was at nursery, they were supposed to know their letters and be able to write before they went to school - a complete 180 degree turn from 20 years previously! I do wonder why levels of literacy are so low, though. It does seem as if something isn't go right for some unfortunate children.

As for libaries, there used to be a minimum age of five when I was a child, but now they are open to all ages - brilliant! Ours is only small but they have lots of board books, pop-ups and all the popular titles, plus vidoes, cd's, dvd's etc. It's great for trying out books, which you might want to buy later and simply for getting a wider variety. There's a Story Time session at our library and other larger ones have art and craft days, themed days and summer reading schemes. Long Live Libraries!

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I love libraries - at our local library you can order children's books online (from home) for free from anywhere in the County. So ds1 (6) goes to Ottakars, sees a (newly published) book he likes, comes home and orders it from the library, and within a week or so it's waiting for him to collect. Then if it's good he puts it on his Amazon wishlist for his birthday, or when he saves up his pocket money.

The local librarian was one of the most significant adults in his life when he was small. He has speech problems, and she was one of the few people who took the time to talk to him and try to understand him.

As far as early literacy skills are concerned - I am a big fan of 'early' reading, if children are ready, as some of you know.

But one of the key things a parent can do to improve literacy IMO is reading stories to a child. This improves concentration and imagination, particularly once you progress beyond picture books, and it is crucial to expanding their active and passive vocabulary.

HMB- what you said earlier is so true- let the child take the lead- when they are ready- and they are so receptive to it- books have always been accessible in my home- as a child my mum put most of mine on high shelves...so that i didn't spoil them! My boys have batterd books that have been to bed with them,shopping and in the garden......and they have some which have been left on the shelf- it's their choice

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DD (2yo) loves the Gruffalo and sometimes pretends to be him. She loves any books with rhyme and repetition really. Green eggs & ham is a favourite (Sam I am), as are a few we got from our library 'Jump in' and 'All change', 'No problem' and 'Up'. They are all based around simple rhymes and repetition and on the second time of reading them she can remember what the 'rhyming' word is. Dh & i point at the word that she has said to try and make the link. She can also recognise her own name and some characters names in books (her name is Faith, so is becoming rather keen on the shoe shop, she can also recognise the word Max in 'where the wild things are' I suppose this way she's building up a sight vocabulary rather than phonics, but it seems to suit her

lailag - when I mentioned kids getting upset at being behind, I was talking about when my eldest had been in reception class for about 4 months, some of his friends were finding it difficult and got upset. As I said, I didn't teach him before he went to school - just read lots to him.

Once he went to school (term before he was five which in his case was 4 and 11 months) he was obviously really ready because he lapped it up and loved memorising words etc. I think once they are ready they move along in leaps and bounds with a little encouragement. His school didn't teach the alphabet and neither did I - they went by the whole word approach and introduced phonics later, once they could read about 100 words. Before they even looked at a book they got a little paper pamphlet with their first 25 words in it. There were five words to a page and when they could read them all they got to colour in the picture on that page and move onto the next page. This worked really well. The first book they saw only had one word in, 'look', and I remember my eldest being quite disappointed that he knew 25 words and they gave him a book with only one of them in!

I took this same approach when I taught my younger son. I never did any alphabet work, just made a little pamphlet with some common words like the school had and he learned those. Then he started asking how to write other words and I added them to his pamphlet. For ages he carried this pamphlet with him (even to nursery) and showed people how he could read - but wasn't interested in reading from a book. Then suddenly he was interested when I picked a book up (after trying quite a few times) and he was off!

I started some reading schemes and read them through with him first, asking him to repeat the words after me, and he remembered them the second time we looked at the books. He's now learning phonetics at school (Jolly Phonics) and comes home doing the actions and sounds and at this stage it helps because if he doesn't remember a whole word and I point out the first letter, I can see him making the sound and the connection and then he remembers the word.

I didn't use the school scheme because I didn't want him to get bored at school and I thought the more books they read the more confident they will be. I don't think its good to rely on one scheme with one typeface because if they can read quite a lot of words on that scheme, they might find it difficult to read the same words in another book with a different type face.

I used a couple of old schemes - ladybird keywords, the old Peter and Jane books (which one loves and the other finds really boring!) and ladybird Puddle Lane (which they both love, I think because I read one page and they read the other so it feels like less work to them than ploughing through a book alone).

I think using the whole word method initially introduces them into reading books straight away and they see the benefit, whereas if you teach them the alphabet it can take a while before they see the point. Introducing the alphabet and phonetics later on, when they already know a lot of words, helps them when they forget a word they 'know' because they can try to spell it out and guess it and obviously it comes into its own when they are reading lots of words and come across new ones often.

just remembered the other reason I didn't use the school scheme! We moved and changed schools and the new school was on a different reading scheme - the Oxford Reading Tree. This meant my stepdaughter and eldest son didn't know the same set of words and also didn't know the character names in the new scheme, so they had to start at a comparitively low stage in the new school. They've been moved up now (after 5 months) but I still feel the change of scheme held them back from where they would have been had they stayed on the same one at the old school. So at that time I acquired the keywords and puddle lane schemes and started them on those and when I started teaching my youngest I used those two, in the hope that if they were reading two schemes at home as well as the one at school, they wouldn't be held back again when we move schools again (sometime soon)! I also found that this school only lets them bring a book home once a week, whereas the old school gave them one every night - so I felt the progress on the school scheme would be very slow, so I might as well continue the amount of reading they were used to, at home on different schemes.

Gruffalo is a big hit here too, as is The Monkey Puzzle by the same authors.

Recently though a new favourite has surpassed even the gruffalo - coinciding with ds' new dinosaur interest: Harry & the Dinosaurs (and the various sequels). Can't remember the author, but I enjoy them too - great fun!

Gruffalo and Burglar Bill are the big hits in this house.