Are your children’s vaccines up to date?

Set a reminder

Please or to access all these features

Primary education

Join our Primary Education forum to discuss starting school and helping your child get the most out of it.

Teaching 4 year old to read - where to start?

36 replies

amyboo · 27/05/2014 12:36

We live in Belgium and DS1 is bilingual French-English. My DH and I are both English, but DS1 goes to a French-speaking school full time. He won't start learning to read in French at school until he's 6.5, but he's starting to show an interest in reading English books at home. As he's got 2 months off school this summer, it seems like a good time to teach him to read.

So, I was just wondering if anyone could tell me where to start? (or rather DH - he's a former teacher and is much more patient than me!). Is there a series of books we should invest in? Or do we start with some kind of flash cards? Do we start teaching him the phonics sounds? He watches alphablocks so is already pretty familiar with the idea of sounds and letters. Is there an alphablocks series or something that we could use?

Any help would be very gratefully received! Thanks

OP posts:
Are your children’s vaccines up to date?
cornflakegirl · 27/05/2014 12:51

Alphablocks is great, so if he's enjoying that you have a sound basis. DS also really liked Teach Your Monster To Read. We have had good success with the Songbirds series of books by Julia Donaldson. Great pictures and interesting (ish!) stories (through the pictures) even while the words are really simple. DS was reading the first ones fluently and with expression, even though he only knew about six sounds.

DS's primary school learn the sounds using the Floppy Phonics scheme - they do use flashcards and also worksheets for each sound. The worksheets are quite good - pictures to colour, space to practice writing the sound and lots of words with the sound in.

We also bought some Biff Chip and Kipper phonics activity books from the Book People. Lots of stickers, so a hit with DS.

BertieBotts · 27/05/2014 13:13

I've been doing this with DS as we live in Germany :)

First I think if you're going with the phonics method (which I would recommend because it helps them with the very irregular spelling of English too) you need to get familiar with the method itself. I used this book: www.amazon.co.uk/Parents-Survival-Guide-Phonics-Spelling/dp/1408140748/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1401190660&sr=8-1&keywords=guide+to+phonics+and+spelling

There might be other, better books but this one was enough to help me understand. It's very good because it goes through the pre-phonics steps, about distinguishing between different shapes and sounds which are similar.

Then I bought a few of the Biff, Chip and Kipper phonics books - be careful because there are older Oxford Reading Tree B,C,K books which aren't phonics based. Actually, I didn't like their phonics books in the main, but the four books under stage 1 phonics are excellent, it progresses through the alphabet sounds, getting DC to find things in the picture which begin with /a/ or have the sound /i/ in the middle, etc. The second book is a little bit more in depth again with the basic sounds, book 3 is some simple words and then book 4 lets them match very simple sentences to a picture. All of these books have little puzzles at the end, a maze or a spot the difference - which help DC practice recognition skills and pencil control.

The books which I've found fantastic for reading practice and introducing new phonemes are the Songbirds series by Julia Donaldson. You can buy collections for each stage on amazon, for us it's cheaper to buy them on amazon.de than ship them but it depends - you can save if you buy them all at once but it's a big outlay. If you happen to be visiting the UK that would be the best thing to do. I like these because they progress in a linear fashion, with the first stories being entirely decodable. At the start of every story there is a little panel which shows you which sounds this story practices and also the "tricky words" contained in these stories. As I've learned from these boards, "tricky words" aren't words they necessarily need to learn by sight but are often words which can be decoded later, so I tend to let DS have a go but say "Don't worry, this one's tricky, you'll learn it later" and read it for him if he can't manage. But this way he's picked up some of the smaller, high frequency words like one, two, the, to, of, come, some, etc. The front panel also has some ideas for questions and discussion topics and they are better questions for checking understanding, IMO, than the biff, chip and kipper ones which tend to ask random questions like "Who did Biff kick the ball to on page 4?" whereas the Songbirds asks things like "Why do you think..." and "How might X have felt when..." and if they understood what they were reading, they'll be able to answer rather than just remembering single words from the text.

Writing is harder to practice, I find the reading easy as it's pretty organic, he asks to read and if he's finding it hard or not interested we stop for a bit but after a while he will pick it up again. I find with writing he wants to do more than he can so I'm struggling to find activities to practice which are appropriate to his level. I bought a couple of "Collins Easy Learning" books, the Writing 1 and 2 (although they were very basic - the English ones are better) to help him practice but he's not so interested in sticking at it, I think if that's an approach I want to do we'll need to set a time of the week for writing practice. But other things, we write little notes to each other, I let him practice typing, other stuff like that.

NaturalBaby · 27/05/2014 13:26

I have a 3.5yr old and are in a similar situation. We go back to England a few times a year and I stock up on books there, or order workbooks online. The usborne books are really good but can be pricey. The book people also had a deal the other day for learning to read books.

I've also googled free writing worksheets online so have printed off a few.

My older dc's learned to read and write in England and used the read, write, inc scheme which I've found really good.

ContinentalKat · 27/05/2014 13:40

We were living abroad and I had to teach ds how to read and write quickly, as he was going to start school in the middle of Year 1 with no prior schooling.

I bought the complete set of jolly phonics, teacher handbook and student workbooks, and we did reasonably well with that.

PastSellByDate · 29/05/2014 16:27

Try OXFORD OWL: www.oxfordowl.co.uk/for-home

they support early reading and maths skills.

HTH

LadyWithLapdog · 29/05/2014 16:33

I taught mine with a book by Siegfried Engelman. Have a look on Amazon. Three kids, great success.

amyboo · 30/05/2014 11:43

Thanks for the tips every one. I'm off to the UK tomorrow, so will head to Waterstones and hunt out the Songbirds series. The Oxford Owl website looks great too. Hope he stays keen!

OP posts:
BlueChampagne · 30/05/2014 13:50

An app like Pocket Phonics is worth considering. Using a phone/tablet is generally a draw!

BertieBotts · 30/05/2014 14:35

Amazon is cheaper than waterstones for songbirds. I know it's a business not everyone wants to support but the difference is quite big - around £11 each RRP and they're £7ish each on amazon. There are 9 books I think?

mrz · 30/05/2014 14:47

The Book People are offering the complete set of Songbirds (36 books) for £15 www.thebookpeople.co.uk/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/qs_searchResult_tbp?catalogId=10051&langId=100&storeId=10001&searchTerm=songbirds saving over £100

BertieBotts · 30/05/2014 14:59

No they aren't. That's been on there for ages and it's always sold out. It's not even the full set either, it's a shame.

BertieBotts · 30/05/2014 15:00

Oh no, sorry, I stand corrected! They're back in stock :) It's not the full collection but definitely a good selection of different levels.

mrz · 30/05/2014 15:20

It definitely is the full Songbirds collection BB but there is a second collection called More Songbirds perhaps you mean them?

nonicknameseemsavailable · 30/05/2014 17:55

We have the set from the book people which I bought when they first had it a few years ago and as Mrz has said it is the original full collection but then they wrote more stories to supplement each level. I would recommend Songbirds, my girls have liked them, I have enjoyed them reading them (more than I can say about a lot of learning to read books) and they picked up reading very quickly with them. Oxford Owl website I would also agree with as it is free and you can use it to supplement the songbirds books. they have a range of different types of books at each level so good variety and different styles and stories.

glenthebattleostrich · 30/05/2014 17:58

Definitely songbirds and alphablocks.

DD also really enjoys reading eggs

BertieBotts · 30/05/2014 18:12

It can't be - there are only 36 stories? In the books I have there are 9 books and 6 stories in each book apart from the first which has 12. Or are there more than one story in each book?

BertieBotts · 30/05/2014 18:14

I'm really tempted to buy the set of individual ones though either to donate to the English language library here or to keep for if I get involved in teaching other kids to read English which I'm semi hoping to do! But it's a maybe and for the moment there seems no sense in duplicating what I have.

nonicknameseemsavailable · 30/05/2014 18:19

The original ones they wrote as I understand it bertiebotts were only 6 books at each level. then they wrote more. According to Julia Donaldson's website there are 60 now www.juliadonaldson.co.uk/phonics.htm
12 at stage 1, 12 at stage 2, 12 at stage 3, 12 at stage 4 and then 6 at stage 5 and 6.

nonicknameseemsavailable · 30/05/2014 18:20

there is only 1 story in each of the books in the book people set - sorry forgot to say that.

mrz · 30/05/2014 18:23

There are 6 books in each of the Songbird levels (pink, red, yell, blue, green and orange book band) and as glenthebattleostrich says they produced a further 6 books (More Songbirds) but only for the early levels. One story per book I'm afraid.

mrz · 30/05/2014 18:30

36 Songbirds plus 24 More Songbirds

BertieBotts · 30/05/2014 18:50

Ah ok :)

mrz · 31/05/2014 08:15

BB if you decide to get involved in teaching other kids to read I would recommend the Dandelion or Sounds-Write books as a better alternative (much as I like the Songbirds) as they are more systematic.

MotleyCroup · 31/05/2014 10:05

DS couldn't read when he started school, although his vocab was excellent.

As a 'dinosaur mum' I didn't know the way reading was taught in school and I didn't want to confuse him by trying to 'teach' him my way.

I read to him every night and of course he picked up words and sounds from there but it was all light hearted, no pressure.

He quickly progressed once he started Reception and he's a 'free reader' at his new school - Y2.

Just my take on it. Don't feel pressure to 'teach' your dc to read, reading to them every night and having a healthy interested in different books is just as rewarding.

I'm glad I didn't know about MN when ds started school or I would possibly be panicking Grin

MotleyCroup · 31/05/2014 10:07

Ds LOVED Alphablocks too. This programme also taught me about phonics.

Swipe left for the next trending thread