talk to me about reading and writing

[halia]

Two parts to this. Firstly I'd like to know if MNetters think that this level of development is OK for a 4 yr old.

DS (4) can hold a pencil properly (sometimes) he can do the first letter of his name and has finally clicked that it is the letter 's' he can also draw M/m for mummy and d for daddy. He recognises N for nana. He points all of these out regularly on signs and in books.

He thinks letters and numbers are the same thing (so often says look mummy my number when pointing to an S) and he thinks number 5 is a letter S.

He will do up and down controlled 'writing' and say its your name or a story. And if he is in the mood he will copy / draw over dotted lines to do words like Hpapy birthday daddy.

He thinks you do a kiss like a squashed o shape cos thats the shape of your mouth

He will 'read' books to himself is he knows the story and loves me/dad reading to him.

He has an alphabet chart on his wall(hand drawn and illustrated with his favourite things which he coloured in)

DH thinks he should be 'learning to read' I think he's doing just fine and we shouldn't push it especially as I don't understand phonics at all!

The only two things I was going to do was to see if he could manage his whole name by september. There's only 3 letters in it and he can draw them all with prompting - I just thought maybe we could gently work on the difference between sunny (same starting letter and number of letters) and his name.
Also to see if he could learn the first letter of his surname - both of these are really just to help him out recognising his gear / peg/ drawer at school.

Secondly - I'm a bit confused about the whole issue of teaching your child to read and write. I know there are teachers who say 'thats my job not yours' but I thought that a childs education and development were my job as his parent?

I talk to DS about 's' not 'ess' ie letter sounds not letter names. And if he gets told 'ess' by accident I try and say "ess is the letter name, it makes the sound s".

Phoenics puzzles me. It seems so much more complex than simply learning the alphabet.

I learnt to read by the 'sound' alphabet.
a buh cuh duh e fuh guh h ....... and used them to sound out words. I was also taught that the letters had names A Bee See .... and I never got confused about that.
I learnt blended sounds s and h make shhh, and did flashcard word recognition.

I then had the option of recognising whole words (which I thought was good for pattern recognition and faster reading) and sounding out new/ harder words.
My mom taught me at home and I could read well by the time I was 4 and stayed top of my class for reading all through school.

On the other hand DH was told that his parents shouldn't teach him to read or write at home and he ended up in remedial class and didn't read until he was 8.

Why is it so important to have 'correct' letter formation? surely the idea is that they are able to form recognisable letters? If DS is comfortable drawing an s from bottom to top and he can do it quickly and easily why is that bad?

The letter formation is important when it comes to joined up writing. If a child has always 'drawn' a letter incorrectly, it will have to learn to write all over agin when attempting proper handwriting as the letters will not join correctly.
I have to say that your DS seems to be doing fine. Don't push him, if he asks questions etc then anwer them, show him etc. He will have enough of learning once he starts school. Also its important that he doesn't get confused when he starts school because you have taught something one way and the school do it differently.

Make sure you don't teach your son buh, cuh, duh etc as this is almost as big a problem as bee, see, dee for children when blending sounds to make words.

Wow your son sounds like he is doing exceptionally well IMO!

When DS1 started Reception class there were a few children who could write their names and mine was one of the 50% who couldnt and wouldn't really even try (wasn't interested).

He kind of could say the alphabet (as we say iit) due to a Winnie the Pooh press and learn book thing, but not sure how much it "meant" to him.

Within 1 term at Reception he could read simple words like AND and THE and BOY and was given books with no words to tell me the story from them. By the end of reception he was doing well.

Now he is half way through Year 1 and it still amazes me when he reads to me, through no "help" of my own apart from reading with him daily, pointing out shop/road signs, food packet words etc.

I think in Reception they learn aa buh cuh duh etc and then change to ay bee see in Year 1 (well, at our school anyway), so i wouldn't worry too much about it all - really you will see huge results when the teachers are doing it! You jus have to back up what the do.

Its worth noting that pretty much ALL thekids that culd write their names when starting reception were girls!

For a 4 year old not yet at school that sounds entirely normal to me, if a little advanced.

when you say dont teach them duh for d do you mean no sounds at all or the phonics of d which is more like dddd??

I really don't understand the whole phonics thing and at ds1 nursery school they are teaching him to read by sight/memory with a bit of letter sounds starting now so he just memorises words and can't "spell them out" yet (this is how I learnt to read - memorising)

I tend to say "it's name is d it's sound is duh" or whatever as he is very interested.

god I thought he was behind as I kept hearing about people with 2 and 3 yr olds who could read and here was I with a 4 yr old who still thinks letters and numbers are the same thing and doesn't quite get that words have lots of letters in them. (ie if you point to the word Sun he is likely to say "that's my number" and not understand that its a different word to his name (which begins with s)

Its not exactly buh - just the non voiced sound of a 'b'.

Wow is cursive still considered 'proper' hadnwriting - how quaint
Everyone i know uses print or computers nowadays!

You hear about 2 and 3 year olds who can read because their parents like to, erm, make the fact known. ;) Most kids don't start school able to read - recognising his name is definitely a good start. I did a very similar thing with DD - she would 'recognise' any word of approximately the right length with a capital N as her name, so I 'tested' her with a similar word until she consistently recognised her name. It was very useful for school, but other than that she couldn't read, could form letters in some fashion or another, could sing the alphabet but not reliably recognise letters out of that context. She'd just about got the difference between letters and numbers before she started school - always thought letters were numbers, I think because she'd been pretty good at numbers from a much earlier age.

She's now 5.2, summer term in Reception, doing just fine, she has come on MASSES in what she can do since starting school. Not least in forming her letters - if there was a back-to-front, upside-down, downright WEIRD way to write a letter, she would do it, before starting school, and would not be corrected. With a bit of peer and teacher pressure, everything falls into place!

To be honest he sounds just fine just conerntrate on giving him life experences and life skills. For example how to use a knife and fork correctly. the other stuff I wouldnt worry.

I have to say I am not a huge fan of going over dotted writing as it does not teach the child too much.

Correct letter formation is important but not yet.

I would also concerntrate on building hand musles which are VITAL for writing by doing things like using playdoug, using seringes filling with icing sugar to be squirted outsize onto paper (bought off Ebay), gloop (mixing water and cornflour together)

I just would just let your son be a little boy. He has over 10 years of formal education to look forward to.

I agree with cloudhopper

Another one to agree with cloudhopper.

from an ex-teacher's point of view I would hope that a child starting school could

• listen quietly
• concentrate for short periods of time
• follow instructions
• dress themselves (crucial!!)
• speaking skills are v key - e.g. being able to detect rhyming words helps them listen to different parts of words, also range of vocabulary.

I wouldn't press the formal learning of numbers and letters too much, teachers in reception will have their own way to teach these. Although recognising own name is helpful too.