Interested in reading at 3 what to do?

[biddyofsuburbia]

DD was 3 in Jan and is now showing a lot of interest in learning to read. She has been looking at some of the ORT books that I had for DS and can recognise 'Floppy', 'mum' and 'dad' although she doesn't yet know all the individual sounds. If I encourage this she may well be able to read before starting school. i.e. September 2011 - Do you think this would be a problem for her teachers - i.e. when DS started school he couldn't read and they said they expected nothing as it was their job to teach and they started from scratch with phonics, letter sounds etc. Should I actively encourage or not? help please.

(p.s. not suggesting any kind of giftedness here I think she's quite normal I just don't want to pre-empt or teach her in the wrong way - maybe it's not the 'done thing' I just don't know!)

No, there are many children who can read to varying levels before starting school. It isn't a problem and teachers will have come across it before. They will start from scratch - but often this isn't a bad thing. Just because a child can read they may not have picked up on all their phonic sounds, etc and they need them for writing, not just reading.

Just make sure that if you do do some sound work with her you use the proper sounds the letters make rather than using just letter names or saying things like "buh" "suh".

thanks Hulababy good to know!

and avoid ORT as she will get enough of that at school

What would be good for 3 yrs then? The ORT are the read at home ones and they've got something to find on each page ...I think she's enjoying 'engaging' with the books rather than just being read to. Any suggestions v. welcome!

oh any books you have in the housem, I just meqany don't get hung up on stages etc

the ancient Ladybird ones (Peter & Jane especially) are pretty good

Cheers MrsBadger - I won't worry about stages and I will dig out my old ladybirds and see if that grabs her! Biff and chip are the only basic reading books I've got at the minute, as in lots of word repetition and so on, although we've got tons of picture books as I can't come away with just one if I go into a bookshop, so if anyone does have any suggestions of similar but not done to death at school I'd be interested!

The Allan Ahlberg Red Nose readers (I got a set from the Book People) are great fun.

For sounds, theres a CBeebies programme called AlphaBlocks that DS(3) loves, and they do all the sounds

I wouldn't use any scheme books for now. Just look at her picture books and she can follow the story words with you that way.

if you do need scheme books then chose phonetic based ones, rather than look and say type books (such as the main ORT ones)

but not the |Usborne phonics ones as the stories are abominable

eg

'Max packs Zak's knick-knacks in a black sack'

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