Learn to read resources for 4yo

[swissrollisntswiss]

DS is 4. He starts school this year but we live abroad and he’ll be taught in another language. The current plan is that we will teach him to read English at home. We’re not in a particular rush to start but he’s recently become interested in letters and their sounds.

I’m looking for resources and methods to teach him with. As well as recommendations for reading books and workbooks, I’m also open to online and apps. Thanks!

Hmmm. What kind of way do they teaching reading in the country you are in? I would have thought it might be really confusing to learn one way at school but a different way at home. Maybe something like alphablocks would be good at getting him to learn English phonics?

Have a look at Reading Eggs. Worked well for us.

Yes reading eggs is brilliant

@msmatcha @tonyhawks23 thanks, I had heard about Reading eggs but also that it’s American. Do you find that a problem or does it bother you?

@mynameiscalypso very good point and we have considered it. They don’t do any formal reading or writing education here until 6 so I think we have a bit of a window at the moment to try. I’m not sure what that will mean for him when he starts to learn at school though. It’ll be German so not a huge jump but different enough.

Children are taught Welsh and English phonics in English medium schools in Wales and they quickly learn the difference so I wouldn’t worry about learning the two at the same time.

For a complete phonics scheme with lots of guidance you might want to look at Twinkl phonics. It’s subscription only but DfE approved and child friendly. I used it during the Covid lockdown with DD.

We used:
Teach Your Monster to Read
Alphablocks
for fun/casual familiarisation

Twinkl Phonics youtube channel for introducing Level 2 & 3 sounds in order.

The Usborne Very First Reading book set for reading at home - starts with 'cat on the mat' and introduces new sounds in each book.

Biff, Chip & Kipper activity books and the Oxford Owl ebook library.

That makes sense - there are several bilingual English/german children in my son's reception class and they seem to manage pretty well. I hated reading eggs and my son never liked it. We have a few BBC apps and then we got some materials from the Jolly Phonics scheme as well. The hardest part was learning phonics myself...

On Reading Eggs the fast phonics part of it is far far better than the Reading eggs part. The Reading eggs bit teaches in a weird order and is focused on word families and whole word recognition, which is very different to how reading is taught in this country. Fast phonics matches well with what’s taught in reception/y1 and has worked well for my daughter.

teach your monster to read is quite good. It’s free! My bugbear is that it progresses quite quickly and you can’t go back and practice sounds they haven’t got yet (it intersperses practice of previously taught sounds with the new stuff, but you can’t actively choose to go back and repeat sections they haven’t got). My daughter quickly got out of her depth and yet it just kept moving her on and on.

Ive never had a problem with reading eggs, didn't notice it was american, my third is using it now, the older two learnt brilliantly from it. also good is mr thorne from you tube with geraldine, just learning phonics is what uk schools use.

Teach your monster to read.

Reading eggs is good but my boy seems to avoid leaning on there and do side games.

The website phonics play is very good. They have some free games if you don't want to pay

I'm old fashioned I love the biff chip and kipper books. Oxford reading tree.

If you fancy zoom lessons there are some good ones with £2tuition hub that are after school hours once you get the basics with phonics. Or you can get the recordings of their zoom lessons and watch when you have time. Learn laugh play- also good for zoom lessons.

You can also get the national curriculum off the gov website. Look for: Letters and sounds. It's got it all planned out week by week for learning to read

Thank you for so many recommendations and suggestions, it’s given me some great starting points.

Teach your monster to read! It's brilliant.