What advice would you give for teching my 7 year old dd to read?

[mummyloveslucy]

Hi, my daughter is nearly 7 and I've decided to start teaching her to read. She's learning the letter sounds at the moment but struggles with the ones that look simillar eg b/d, t/f ect. I've bought the Galor park compleate reading guide. It does look good and very simple. My daughter does like work books so i'm hoping it'll be sucessful. She does get very frustrated when she doesn't get something or gets things wrong.
Is there any advice you could give me? Any ways of making it more fun for her?
She loves games, so any game that would help her remember letter sounds would be great.
Also, how would I gage if she's really ready for it? I don't want to make her struggle with something she'd be able to pick up easily a year or two later. She says she wants to learn, but I don't want her getting too stressed about it. She does have a developmental delay and problems with her speech which will probubly make it much harder for her.

spend hours and hours playing Alphablocks games on CBeebies website, and then move on to Word World on (I think) NBS kids...

Here's a game I used to play with a very disaffected 15 year old who was learning to read:

Make two or three large 'dice' with letter sounds on each face instead of numbers (e.g. a, e, b, d, th, sh, etc.) Take turns to throw the dice and try to make words with the sounds that you get. You get two points for a real word, and one point for a made-up word that you can pronounce correctly. (we also used to play that you get three points for a swear word, but perhaps you might want to leave that rule out )

Well, I've only had one child learn to read so far so I am no expert, but I feel that motivation is essential. My older daughter tended to get easily frustrated too, so I thought it was important to tackle reading only when she was very very VERY keen. Apparently that day does come for all children if you wait long enough. HE parents say that given a choice, the enthusiasm to want to read often comes several years later than the age at which reading would be introduced at school. Sevenish seems to be a common age to want to read. You've said that your dd is a late bloomer, so at a guess I would think it might just be a little early for her still.

You mentioned that your daughter says she wants to read. Was this just a passing one-off comment or in response to you suggesting the idea to her? Or is she actually pestering you on a regular basis to help her with it?

Perhaps you could just dabble your toes in the water but if your daughter doesn't seem totally determined to make it happen right now, set it aside until she is absolutely begging for it and then try again. Or she may just spontaneously "get it" for herself at some point over the next few years - some kids do - so waiting a little longer could save both of you a lot of effort and frustration.

I don't think I remember ever having heard an HE parent say they wished they had started teaching their child to read earlier, but an awful lot have said they started too early and wished they had waited longer. Psychologist Peter Gray claims that outside a school environment there is no critical period for learning to read and no particular advantage to starting young: www.psychologytoday.com/blog/freedom-learn/201002/children-teach-themselves-read

Learning to read was a hard slog for my older dd. Though quite bright, she worked at it from 6.5 to 9 before it became easy. In retrospect I think she may have started too young, because she felt subtle (or not-so-subtle) pressure to do so from almost everybody around her. But all along the road there was slow steady progress and she never lost heart, because she wanted so badly to be able to read. Reading was never a battleground for us because all the motivation came from her.

Thanks everyone, that's really helpful. Saracen- she's isn't pestering me to learn to read yet. I just asked her if she'd like too and she said yes, so it was me putting the thought in her head rather than her asking.
I'll try some of those games first and go from there. I'll be able to tell if she's ready or not from how she gets along with that.

I forgot starfall.com

That's a wonderful wonderful site for a child to explore at their own pace, over several years, getting different things out of it each time.

Please don't push Lucy towards reading. The best learning at primary age happens through conversation - reading is really not important yet.

Thanks ommmward, I won't push her to learn yet. I want her to enjoy it as much as she can. I know her intelligence has improved a lot in the past year. Her understanding and vocab have improved alot. We haven't been doing anything formally except speech therapy, piano and brain gym which is just physical excersises.

sounds perfect! It's lovely when you can just step back and watch how well she is developing, without having to be really anxious about it - it sounds as if you are doing great!

Thank you.

letterland song cd in the car, and the book at bedtime. Have a look here at some of the songs http://www.youtube.com/user/LetterlandMedia

I would use Mona McNee whole tutorial here for free. Old fashioned but works.

I should say-the lessons are for you-not her. Lots of games given. I have never found anything better.

Reading Eggs

We're on a free trial currently and DS loves it.

I honestly think that the single best thing you can do to get a child reading is to read to them. Nothing else matters very much. If a child is clearly dyslexic at some point they will probably need specialist intervention (eg a very systematic phonics program), but even then they need the motivation, the general knowledge of their language, that comes from having had really good books read to them, books that stretch them.

I have to say, I have seen the galore park reading book and I do think it was a bit dire. Sorry. Just not very well planned.