Teaching a child to read / write

[confusedinlondon]

Hello,
I would like to teach my child to read and write (improve his pen control). Any suggestions about how best to do this.
He is 3 years old. Like most 3 years, he doesn't sit still for long.

I just want to instil a love of learning at an early age. I don't want to pressure him in anyway.

I was thinking of getting the Jolly Phonics books and spending 10 mins a few times a week reading them with him. As well as reading other books to him, to get him into the habit of holding / enjoying a book.

With the writing, I was planning on get some books to practice his pen control.

Any idea or suggestions.

Mrz, I am sure your way must be the best way, but I do also think there are other ways that are as effective for some children.

X post again, mrz. That's what I thought, and agree, it's very effective.

Historically letter formation (and spelling) have been very much left to chance with the expectation that children will know how to write because they have something to copy.

Someone from eyfs here! Please don't 'teach' your child to read and write. Our foundation stage classes are now full of children with poor fine motor skills and a limited ability to do very basic things like zip their coat up, change for a pe etc.
Go outside, climb trees, scrunch up newspaper and throw it into boxes (great for developing the muscles required when writing should be introduced)
Read endless books to them, teach them great self care skills and how to recognise (but not write) their own name.
Childhood is very short and the expectations of children within our education system increases all the time. Please don't be in a rush to get to the next stage, sit back and enjoy the lovely one you're at.

daydream, what about the ones who wants to do it? What if the parents are merely following child's desire/need?
Is it still wrong to teach them early?
I think being able to read early has so much advantage, tbh, since they can access so many info.
And I also believe when child shows interests in something, that's the best time to learn something.

Someone from EYFS here too ...!

Yes we are seeing poor physical development in many of our pupils with fewer children playing outdoors so it is important that these skills are developed But i agree with Irvine. Go with the child's interests. Balance is central.

But are they following the child's desire to read/write or merely attempting to fulfil it once the parent has suggested/encouraged it?
My own ds would have loved me to have introduced him to jolly phonics at a young age (my dd not so much!) but we read, painted, drew etc and he arrived at school ready to learn and picked things up swiftly.

This isn't about schools it's about parents supporting their own child at home

I think daydream has a point in that there's no need to push them into reading and writing if they're happy doing and learning other things. On the other hand I also agree with irvine that you have to follow your child's lead. You don't just say "You've learned everything listed in EYFS for your age, stop learning now."

I rather resent the suggestion that DD learning to read and attempting to write means she wasn't outdoors playing with friends or didn't learn to do zips and take herself to the toilet. As it happens she did all that with great enthusiasm from a young age. Though even if she'd been slow with toileting say it wouldn't mean she shouldn't keep learning in the areas she was strong on too. There are plenty of minutes in the day.

We did follow preschool advice and didn't try to correct DD's letter formation till school. I don't know if that was good advice or not. School happened to change from print to cursive in her year, so if we had corrected it it would have still been wrong, but with less random capitals.

cat re letter formation advice, unfortunately they move the goal posts all the time and the pressure these little children are under now is awful (a whole different thread!) I had a clear out recently and found my own dcs books from y1/2 and it was shocking to see that what they did back then, is what we do in F2 now 😒

Gosh no, they don't feel any pressure here, they think they're playing all day :) Love our EYFS team. (Though I have some issues with their take on phonics, so maybe just as well DD learned that before school started.)

When we had a preparing your child for school talk at nursery, we were advised to focus on activities that build up and strengthen the muscles and skills needed for when writing is introduced at school, rather than trying to teach letter formation.

So stuff like play doh, Lego, getting them to spray plants with those squeezy hand held misters, threading beads. Plus encouraging mark making like colouring, painting, drawing, but just free form scribbles or pictures.

From my experience of a son at just over 3 and a daughter at 4.5 I think teaching children to read and write just takes persistence and lots of practising. Our daughter is the type that follows instructions really well. So she would sit there with flash cards and would do tracing etc. And by the age of 3 and a bit could read and write (now independently writes pretty complicated words). Our son on the other hand doesn't like to sit still for more than a couple of minutes. So what worked with him was competing with his sister (!), reading signs when we're out and about, writing with chalk in the park, tracing things on sand, using bread dough to form letters etc. At just over 3, he can also read CVC words and writes his name beautifully.

My point is: learning to read and write takes daily practice, but you need to both make it fun and adapt to how your child actually learns.

Now as to whether we started early and this is a complete waste of time, only time will tell. But I'm happy they're both engaged and seem happy reading books and having a go at writing for the time being.

We had an app where you could trace the letters on the screen with your finger. It showed the child where to start and which way round etc to go. Tracing worked brilliantly with my kids to get them forming their letters correctly and with the app it also taught the letter sounds.
When they started school they started by filling in the dots (tracing?) of wavy lives, circles etc to help them get the idea of pen control and which way round letters like c, a, o, g etc went when you were writing them.
Tracing worked brilliantly for us to get started.
As well as learning the phonemes for individual letters via the app, books and Alphablocks we also learnt the abc song with letter names. DS was a free reader by October Year 1 and I feel these things helped him.
The app for letter formation was I think called Pocket Phonics. We also has the free version of Reading Raven, Reading Eggs and I bought Monkey Maths too.
I realise it sounds all very tablet based but we did look at actual books too!