What's a 'din'?!

[HashtagTired]

So my reception year dd is bringing home books to read, and two she has read in the past week involve the word ‘din’?

Who’s Tim? And what is his ‘din’?!

Don't my first thought from thread title was 'idiot!'. You can tell where I grew up 😂🙈

ThatsNotAKnife, I don't find it strange that kids don't know the words. The problem comes in when they can't understand a text because the vocabulary is too obscure or when we assume they know the words.

Because early books are restricted by the sounds that children can access, the books can be less comprehensible to a child, which doesn't make the reading process more enjoyable. This is why my kids read more than just decodable books early on, with support.

With the reception group I was working with, they had to read questions and give an answer. One of the questions was, "Can a rig go up a hill?" There were also silly questions like, "Is the sun wet?" Very few knew "rig," and you're right that's a good opportunity to discuss meaning.

My four-year-old can read "noise," "racket," and "din," and I'm pretty sure he'd get "noise," assume "racket" had to do with tennis, and wonder who forgot to add the "ner" to "dinner." That doesn't worry me a bit as I don't use "racket" or "din."

I don't find it strange that kids don't know the words. The problem comes in when they can't understand a text because the vocabulary is too obscure or when we assume they know the words.

Agreed. But when there are only five or six words on a page, and the child can't understand half the nouns (or any of the nouns, when the author is running out of CVC proper nouns) then it's going to be very tricky. It's disheartening to need a high proportion explained to you in order to proceed - a bit like reading something in a foreign language when all you can recognise is the verb endings

Then the parent looks up the word in advance (if they don’t know it either) and you act it out for the child.
Din is not difficult to act out.
Half the deal with reading is getting pleasure out of doing it. Even if that is parents faking it.

Lol at being bludgeoned to death by the English language.

I think your DD1 and my niece might be made from the same mould.

“Why is it worrying that many children of 4/5 years of age haven't yet come across words such as cog or rig in their lives, explaining why they don't know the meaning of these words?” “Cogs” is a very common construction toy found in many EY settings (definitely have it in ours along with a learning cube which has linking Cogs on one side) but perhaps no one talks to the children when they are building so i don’ t think it’s unreasonable for them to know the word. The one child who knew the word gave a great description and said they were like the Cogs on his bike chain (obviously someone had talked to him)

Rig is a tricky one as it has several meanings. Because of my profession to me rig will always first and foremost be either the noun which describes the structure lights are hung on, a noun meaning the set of lights for a show in their assigned positions or the verb meaning to hang lights. If you’re into sailing it will have a different meaning, and be both a noun and a verb too.

Colloquially you can rig something up or together, which I would take to mean some sort of basic improvised structure. The theres an oil rig and a painting rig (I’m not entirely sure what the latter actually is). None of which means a lot to a four year old learning to read.

So, shoot me, I’d not heard of the word ‘din’ before, and we only read the book for the first time this evening - so we’re both pretty clear on that now and yes, it’s pretty obvious when one actually reads the ‘story’. My daughter seemed to enjoy the book, so I guess that is what counts!

But I’ve enjoyed reading the discussion on the thread. Some really interesting stuff on here, so thanks for taking the time to post