Encouraging my 4yo ds to read.... ideas, please?

[PiedWagtail]

DS age 4 is in reception. He started off quite well with reading and was happy to sit and sound out letters and blend them. Now he is less happy to do it and is quite hit and miss - he will read am or and on one page and by the next page he has forgotten them! Now, I KNOW he is young, and in Scotland he wouldn't even be in school yet (grr), but he is! Does anyone have any ideas to help him, of interesting books to read? We do jolly phonics at school - Jelly and Bean, Songbird etc etc. Thanks :)

Find something funny and also something repetitive that he will remember, that you read over and over and over again to him until you are mind dead but he will then pick up for himself, perhaps you read one sentence and he the next. Not a phonics expert and you can obviously search those websites, but on general books, does he enjoy the Hairy McLary from Donaldson's Dairy series? Great rhyming stories about dogs... My 3 year old godson is giving his mother no peace at all about Owl Babies - not rhyming but wide appeal. I intend to introduce him to Dr Seuss - Cat in the Hat - v soon - and Green Eggs and Ham and all the rest of the canon.

Red fox do some great little books too. Be warned by me - DS found the school books v boring and was put off books for life ... He does a great skit - worthy of Jack Dee etc - of "giraffe goes to the zoo" or equivalent. Keep the interest going is what I'd advise.

he will read am or and on one page and by the next page he has forgotten them!

Definitely nothing to stress about. Reading isn't about learning discrete words, it is about using letter/sound correspondence knowledge to sound out and blend words. With enough practice (and what is 'enough' varies hugely from child to child) the process will be come unconscious and automatic.

If he doesn't 'recognise' a word, just get him to sound it out and blend it again. Don't give him any idea that you expect him to 'remember' it. You'll just stress him and make him less willing to read.

I wouldn't put any pressure on at all. Do whatever reading is required for school and leave it at that. He has plenty of time to develop his skills and to, hopefully, come to enjoy reading.

Get an app for your ipod or iphone? My DS really loves these and can now spell out and sound 3 letter words. You can make it as repetitive as you want, and stick to groups of letters until they've sunk in. great stuff!

"Reading isn't about learning discrete words"

Of course it is!

Reading is about lots of different things. I don't work out what each word says every time I read a paragraph! Of course I recognise familiar words. I only need to work out what a word says when I don't recognise it.

Even us adults are still learning to read. It's a process which doesn't end until we die. We simply get better at it.

To encourage both ds and dd to read we used to do treasure hunts around the house using sentences clues such as 'look under the chair', 'look in the bin', 'it is on the table' or 'try on your bed', to locate the next clue.

The final clue always led to the 'treat' of the next book in a series they liked, which we would sit and read together.

As their reading got better we used more complex words or let them write clues themselves (helped with letter formation).

Some would call this bribery - we just thought it made reading fun and gave it a purpose from the kids points of view.

Don't stress about it. Most kids really learn to read at around 6. There are always the exceptional few who start much younger - even three - but they are usually advanced at everything. By the time you get to Year 3, it's impossible to tell who was reading early and who wasn't. That is unless the child has a real reading problem, which is another matter.

You could try a new medium, eg phonics on computer or smartphone? The access to technology might tempt him!

DD (4.6 in yrR) really loves letter magnets and that sort of thing. Anything that makes it a physical activity really encourages her.

She can read simple words quite well, but when it comes to actual books she doesn't want to read them herself. I can't blame her - she's had 4 years of mummy and daddy reading to her, why would she want to (in her mind - obviously she still has bedtime stories!) give that up? :)

By the way Pied Wagtails are one of my favourite birds :o