What To Do With a Three Year Old

[learnandsay]

Hi Folks,

I've been teaching my three year old daughter to recognise words, sentences and phrases. So for those of you who know the Usborne phonics readers will know Big Pig on a Dig and Ted's Shed. She can read those two and also the first two stories (for those of you with long memories!) Elsie Holmelund Minarik/ Maurice Sendak Little Bear short stories.

The reason I say recognise phrases rather than read is because my daughter still can't decipher new words. So, if you show her short she'll tell you it says short. But if you show her shot, she'll say "I don't know that word."

We're working on decoding unfamiliar words. But it's a long process!

Anyway, she loves simple addition which we call add one (or add any number up to ten) using lego blocks and the like. We do the same for subtraction. And for multiplication we do repeated addition. Which she finds very enjoyable. She can also divide by two, because division by two is very easy and she understands the idea of having one left over. In fact she can divide by three too. But that's another story.

Anyway, here comes my question.

My daughter will start in Reception next September. And there I've seen children learning to recognise their own names and to count to five. I don't believe that the concepts of division and multiplication are even introduced until the children are at least a couple of years older. And I haven't seen Reception children reading entire books. In fact I've seen Year One children still reading made up words like foo, goo and boo on an interactive white board.

So, my question is this........

How do I prevent my daughter's education from declining rapidly when she starts school? I can't help feeling that Reception classes are going to facilitate the unlearning of everything that I've taught her. She's still got almost a year to go till then. So she'll have acquired a lot more to forget by the time she reaches school.

What do you think I should do?

PS, my question assumes that she is sent to the catchment area primary. We have some out of catchment primaries which are avowedly academic in focus. But they are predictably oversubscribed. Our catchment school is proud of its parental involvement. But I can't imagine how sixty children's education is to be undertaken if a teacher needs to spend lots of time teaching my daughter things none of her classmates have any clue about! It just doesn't make sense! So, with the best will in the world my daughter can only expect to get taught what everybody else is being taught, (I think.) Hence her education must inevitably regress. (And I'm very much against home schooling children for social reasons. Although I think that in many case the academic results speak for themselves.)

But surely all experience shows that children who have a broad exposure to literature, history, natural history etc are better than other children at reading and writing because they have something to write about and a wide enough field of reference to understand what they read?

In the opinion of my friend (who was a teacher in a deprived area of London for many years but also had teaching experience elsewhere) it was this lack of width that mean so many of his pupils struggled with literacy: they had nothing to hang the three Rs on, because they came from families where their overall mental development was not stimulated. This, not a failure in phonic techniques, was the main reason for the dire odds.

Barring Special Needs, it is highly unusual for children from well educated families with plenty of reading material and interesting discussions going on at the dinner table to fail to learn to read whatever the method employed by the school.

I am too old to have to worry about the possibility of my own dcs not learning to read, as they are both in secondary, but I never felt they were disadvantaged by not learning to read before school: I would have felt a failure to widen their interests in the early years would have been a disadvantage.

Barring Special Needs, it is highly unusual for children from well educated families with plenty of reading material and interesting discussions going on at the dinner table to fail to learn to read whatever the method employed by the school.

Absolutely.

The one in five thing is a total red herring. You have to look at how many children like her fail to learn to read in the school you are going to send her to.

My catchment area school is in a deprived area and its 11+ results are very low. I don't know how many children like her there are in the school. I have no idea in fact. I did say earlier on that there are academic primaries right on our doorstep but they're out of catchment and heavily oversubscribed.

So the one in five isn't a red herring at all. It's a live barracuda.

To a certain extent the reading debate is academic now because she can already read now. I've taught her! But my question was will her education regress. (I think left to the school in question it probably would. Yes. But it will never be left entirely to the school.)

The one in five still only applies if all other factors stay the same: family life, parental expectations, access to literature etc.

Or are you suggesting that the poor results of your dd catchment is entirely down to poor teaching at this particular school? Surely an important factor will be general family attitudes towards life and learning?

If you have instilled a love of reading in her and a sense of the wonders of literature (rather than just the 3 Rs), then I don't think her education will regress.

This is why I think the love of reading, the sense that there is a whole world out there worth exploring, is so important and precisely what is lacking for many children from deprived areas. They don't learn to read because they don't see it as a source of pleasure.

From here on in it's going to get complicated.

The poor 11+ I suspect comes from a range of things including lack of school's focus on the exam, which is forgiveable because 11+ is not actually part of the curriculum. Then there's family incomes, external tuition, ambition, and no doubt many other factors. But neighbouring schools and I'm talking about less than two miles away, get very, very good 11+ results.

Ability to read and love of reading. Hmmm, well, I've got a philosophy degree and my sister can't read. My other sister flunked college. We all come from the same family, a very erudite one. The ins and outs of it are far too complicated to go into here. But how much home tuition went on, and quality of kindergarten teaching certainly plays a bit part in my opinion.

All in all I'd say it's a hard nut to crack. But in my view the easiest solution is just to teach them what you believe they need to know and let the school take care of the rest. It cuts the risks down considerably.

Did anyone ever find out why your sister didn't learn to read? Did your erudite family not notice? Did anyone suspect dyslexia or any other factor causing it? Were there any particular upheavals? (you don't have to answer, obviously)

I can't say I have spent any time teaching dcs to read, but I would certainly have noticed long before 11 if they hadn't been able to, just because books and sharing books and information play such a large part in our lives.

Seems to be quite a backstory here. I can understand that you are concerned with this early experience, but I really do not believe it means every family is equally at risk.

fwiw I knew how to read long before I started school- my education did not regress in any way when I did start: I just found out more areas to read about, so became even more eager. So I wouldn't worry too much about your dd.

How did no-one in your family not realise that your sister couldn't read until she was eleven? I think I am pretty laid back as a parent but I think even I would have noticed. I can understand your anxieties, but wouldn't it be better to see how it goes and fill in any gaps when DD is at school, rather than pre-empt what the school will teach and then complain that she has already covered that.

Regarding the 11+, as a mumsnetter, you must know how widespread tutoring is. So, no doubt, children in the school with very, very good 11+ results have a lot of tutoring, especially if what is in the exam is not on what is taught at school.

You need to redirect your efforts a little: teach her that it's not appropriate to "run havoc" around your house when she's bored or upset; start with teaching her appropriate behaviour. My DD is also 3 and is learning (by her own interest) to read and do simple maths but I haven't pushed her in this; instead I've focussed primarily on her behaviour. She behaves very well now but she has her moments.

Also I wouldn't worry about regression when your DD starts school. I was the youngest in my class and started school at 4 years 1 month. I was the only child in my class who could read and do basic maths. I didn't regress at all.

Before my older dcs started school, I taught them to dress themselves, use a knife & fork, say please & thank you, sit still, enjoy books, know the main phonetically sound of the letters in the alphabet, add up & recognise numbers & write their own name, (holding the pencil properly). Those were the only things I set out to teach them, but they aren't they only things they learnt. Now they are yr3 & yr1 & both considered g&t by the school.

The most important thing they learnt was an enthusiasm for learning. When they are interested in something they ask questions & together we try & find the answers. Give her the enthusiasm to learn, encourage her to ask questions & help her find the answers!

Take her to a museum or a gallery or a park, have a wander around & find out what shes interested in. Then take her to the library & get a book or 2 about whatever it is, go on the Internet, make a scrap book etc. She'll get far from than that learning division & you won't be stepping on the teachers toes, either.

Firstly, your child can't read. Sorry. If she can't recognize 'shot' then she can't read. She may even be memorizing the books you read together- try her on a new (not Big Pig on a Dig book, those are basically easy to remember rhymes) and see if she can genuinely go it alone. There's a long way from those first few tentative steps to being a free reader. You don't need to stop reading to her and her to you. My 7/8 year old has a very high reading age, but still needs reading to, as she doesn't know every word she comes across at all. Don't give up reading because she can already do it (which she can't anyway), just simply expand the breadth and depth and continue to read aloud to her, and her to you, every evening for the next few years.

Secondly, you are right. Your child won't get the one-to-one attention she is getting now from a teacher. If you want that, you need to either home ed, get a tutor or pay for a private school with small classes. It's hard to accept, but all of us in the state system do, that our child is one of only 30.

The good thing is that leaves a massive role for you. I think you are focusing too narrowly on recognizing words and numbers, but there's nothing wrong with that really, as long as she doesn't start to think her worth is about performing for you. I would do singing counting songs, going out a lot too, she's not a little brain on legs. What I would say is that school leaves them tired, especially initially, so you might want to scale back your ambitions and do something short and fun, or just the school reading, in the week. She can go to language classes, music, physical activities, drama, there's so much out there to develop her as a person.

If she runs, jumps and climbs given the choice, take her outside more? Not suggesting that you aren't, but perhaps she needs more outside time than other children - and lots of time in the woods? How is she on swimming?

What will she learn in reception? Well she'll learn not to run around and jump on people. Skills she should have learned at home.

Teach her to sit still, use the toilet and wash her hands, eat properly and say please and thank you.

Hardgoing, you're referring, without realising it, I suspect, to my opening premise, which is that I'm teaching my daughter to recognise phrases. What actually constitutes reading is debatable and a matter of opinion. In a country where reading is illegal I'd get into trouble for doing what I've done because I've taught her to read to some extent. She can read to some extent. Can she read the King James Bible perfectly? Well, no! She's only three and has been reading for a year.

You're right. If she could work out new words for herself that would be a great improvement and that's coming next. Yes, you're right that is an important part of reading. But it's one important part among many.

It isn't true to say that people who can't read the words antidisestablishmentarianism and octogenarian can't read, any more than it is true to say people who can't read shot can't read. There are stages and abilities within being able to read and people progress through them throughout life.

To those people who have asked why didn't my family notice that my sister couldn't read until she was eleven? I don't know! I really do not have any idea. Although my parents did have some ideas about home schooling and they tried it for some years, unsuccessfully, clearly. But that's not the whole story because my sisters did also go to school for several years. All in all I've no real clue why it wasn't picked up. But I know that it wasn't.

Have you never heard of dyslexia?

Popcorn anyone?

Aye I'll have some popcorn.

When Mrz was teaching reception, I reckon most of her class could read antidisestablishmentarianism by Christmas.
Because a good reception teacher teaches them the sound of each letter or pair of letters and how to break down and sound out a long word.

Which is not the same as seeing "That's not my teddy" on every page and saying "Dats ot y eddy" DS could do this before he was one, but even I didn't convince myself he could read. In fact I didn't even realise he could talk until Dsis pointed out to me what he was doing!

Going back to your point on swimming, teachers at that stage are far more concerned with your child gaining confidence in the water and developing the skills she'll need when she's physically ready to swim than teaching her to plough up and down with a strong front crawl.

That is a really interesting comment Riversidemum. Now that you say it, a lot of things fall into place.... might suggest to school that they explain this explicitly to parents - could save them a lot of hassle from us!

"In Reception class, we assess the children mainly on what they choose to do independently rather than with an adult or directed by an adult. We are looking for them to apply what they have been taught in their own activities. "

Thanks lingle and Riversidemum for posting and reviving that comment. Great post.