You can read a lot to your child! Point out words like and and the. I did the books like Jackie said. But you shouldn't be too concerned at age 3 or 4! They'll learn, and the more relaxed you are, the better they'll learn! Remember, by age 10, noone can tell the difference between kids who start reading at 4 and kids who start reading at 8. The later readers usually pick it up quickly and take off with it, and quickly catch up to level.
I am chiming in late, but. With oldest dd CLP worked fantastic. dd2 basically taught herself with the Dick and Jane readers. I also read A LOT to the girls. I do have to agree with everyone else about relaxing. In our case dd2 was slower to learn than dd1 but she still learned and is reading well now. I can now look forward to learning dd3's learning style. Hopefully I will be able to reuse some of the older girls stuff. Oh, we have been using starfall with her some and she loves it.
Here is the latest on what we are going to do. I bought 100 EZ lessons for a great deal yesterday, so when it gets here we will try it out. I also plan on keeping out ETC a, b, c and the rest of the ETC books we have. Then we also have the innovative kids readers (like bob books, but colorful)http://www.innovativekids.com/index...product_id=66&option=com_virtuemart&Itemid=30. Also to top it all off continue with our daily reading. He loves to be read to. He is at the stage where he makes up his own story from the pictures or he will read the book back to me in his own words. So, I will let you all know how it goes and what ended up working. Thank you for all the great advice.
Now I get to the end of the thread and see you have already bought something, but I thought I'd go ahead and share anyway since I didn't see it listed.:lol: We are trying Reading Made Easy by Valerie Bendt.
I have 100 EZ Lessons for my 4 year old. We started a few months ago but haven't used it for a few weeks. So far it's working for him. He knows 80% of his letters and 60% of their sounds. If anything the program has helped him talk better with the slow/fast way of saying words. My other ways were just not working with speech. Anyhoo back to the reading, he likes starfall but not the letters but he has to do at least on before he goes off and plays on the other stuff. Though I think it's helping his speech too. I use enchantedlearning.com for my mini books. I just printed out a whole bunch for my 3 and 4 year old to do. Lots of reading does help. My 3 year old is actually picking up more or is at least more vocal about knowing letters and a few sight words in her stories (it's more like she knows the book since I read it over and over and over) She was into reading/learning before my son. He is just not getting interested.
Well I have a list of stuff to try. I just happened to find the 100EZ for a great price. Now if it doesn't work, then I will try something else. The reading made easy has been recommended by a lot of people, so it is next on my list.
I was going to mention that with the 100 ez lessons, and other reading programs. If your ds starts to balk or back off of reading STOP, don't push him. I use 100, and around lesson 50 my then 3yo stopped wanting to learn to read, and was acting really bad. So we stopped for a few months, he is now 4 and we are crusing through the rest of the book just fine. Others have had the same problem with their kids at different lessons. Another suggestion I have is to let your kid look at the picture first, tell you a story about it, then read the story. For some reason this change had a huge impact on my son. We also don't do the writing. That was too much for my non-fine motor skills boy. For that we use the Kumon workbooks. Oh and another idea. I just bought the bob books from amazon. I got the first book (mine came with the cd's) and ds read it right out of the box, without me prereading it to him. That was a huge boost of confidence to him. I would say around lesson 40 the kids should be able to read that book.
If I had to add something it would be this...give them the resources (like you are), but when it comes to that moment when it "clicks," that is all the child! You can't make it "click" for him/her. My 4 and 3/4 year old is using 100 EL right now and he HATES it. I like it fine. He cries when he sees the book because we are to the part where he has to sound out every word of a paragraph long story and it drives him bonkers (attention span more than inability). So we have stopped for now. He reads his Bob books, does Explode the Code (which I love. Not only does it teach him to read, it also teaches writing of the lowercase letters and spelling!) - we are almost finished with Book 1 and have done 2 pages per day for just over a month. I wouldn't try to do more than 2 pages a day with a littlle one. But the clicking thing is my best advice - seriously...do what you can, but one day, you will see. It will be like a light bulb went off and your kid will just "get it." I have heard countless parents say that! Some kids are 4 when it happens, some are 6 and the others are somewhere in between. Oh...and another great resource that has really been cool for my kiddo is the Leap Frog DVDs. If your child doesn't know all letter sounds, start with the Talking Letter Factory DVD. Then, when he/she knows the sounds, move to the Talking Words Factory. And the next level is the Code Word Caper that deals with some of the funky words like the silent E words and the 2 vowels in the middle words (like boat). My kids love it and even my 9 year old will watch it over and over.
Rebecca is absolutely right! There is definately an "Ah-Ha!!!" moment when it comes to reading. For my middle one, it was when she came running down the steps during Silent Reading Time (a major no-no...NO ONE dusturbs Mommy during that time!!!) to excitedly inform me that "I KNOW WHAT THESE WORDS SAY!!!" Up until that time, her silent reading was just looking at the books on her own. Once you reach that (and sometimes it happens without the parent knowing it!), you're pretty much "done" with the hardest part of teaching reading. Now the kid is ready to do it. So why is teaching so difficult in the schools? Because they are forcing children to sit down and work on something that many of them are not ready to do. By pushing it and making it such a chore, the kids may NEVER reach that "Ah-Ha!" point. And they are poor readers all their lives. BTW, welcome, Rebecca! We've got lots of new people lately, and I've not "met" most of you yet. I'm Jackie, in central Ohio, getting ready to start Year 10. My kids are dd14, dd12, and ds8.
