Teaching a child how to read is a process that takes time, repetition and dedication. You are going to have frustrating moments along the way. You might wonder if your child is on pace with other kids his or her age. Or you might worry that they are not getting it fast enough. The most important part of teaching your child to read is to go at his or her own pace. Let them learn at their own speed. With repetition and time, you will see everything come together and you'll feel like you've truly accomplished something.
I started the path towards teaching my son how to read around 14 months old. The first thing I did was to teach him the ABC song. We sang it every day until he sang it perfectly, which took a few months. Then we watched the "Meet the Letters" video by Preschool Prep. They have an awesome video that shows letters as fun cartoon characters. There is a lot of repetition so my son was recognizing the letters very quickly. It only took him about 2 months to recognize all of the letters by sight.
Once he recognized all of the letters on the "Meet the Letters" video, I reinforced it by using flashcards. I would hold up a random card with a letter to quiz him. Once I was sure that he knew all 26 letters by sight, we moved on to learning the sounds that each letter makes. I used the flashcards for this as well. I started with letter A and taught him the sound as in "apple." We went through that every day for about 15 minutes. It took about 6 months, but he eventually knew all of the basic sounds of each letter.
Next we worked on building simple three letter words for him to read. I used the popular "Bob Books" series for this. They are simple books with short sentences like "Mat sat" and "Dot sat." When we first started, we would go through each word and break down the individual letters and sounds. For example, the word "sat" we broke down as "s" then "aa" then "t." Then we put the sounds together to say the word "sat." This part of the learning took quite some time before he really caught on. I sat down with at least 10 to 15 minutes each evening and we practiced some words and books together. After about 6 months, he started to get better at it. There were some times when he would get bored and frustrated with the whole process so I backed down a little bit, so he wouldn't think of the learning process as negative. As he get better, he became more excited.
By 2 years and 10 months old he was reading simple words fairly well. Now he is over three and we are starting to learn phonics and more complex words. He enjoys every minute of it. I now have a daughter who is one and a half and I am starting her down the same path.
Comments
Post a Comment