My 6 year old son (who has many special needs) really wants to read. He has hearing difficulties and isnt catching on to phonics but every day he brings me books and asks what different words are or writes letters on a piece of paper and asks what he has written. It is obvious he wants to read. In fact,, he has been in his bed for the last 40 minutes "reading" loudly because he cant fall asleep. So far, we have primarily tried a phonetical approach. He loves leapfrog videos, will watch them as often as we will put them on and loves to be read to. What else can we do to help him learn to read?
I know it's a phonetical approach, but have you looked at starfall.com or literactive.com? I'm using Hooked On Phonics K level with my 4 year old and she is doing really well with it... I will say that if he doesn't know is letters and letter sounds to try to get them grasped before you try HOP... that part of it is very boring for kids and they spend so much time on it that when it gets to the good stuff (actually reading) they are burned out on it.
Will look into both sites, thanks. Also looking into Click n read and Leapfrogs tag system as we spend alot of time in the car driving to appts. Anyone used either of those?
Here are some things we used: Teach your child to read in 100 easy lessons (it made learning to read a game. Very fun). We also use a catholic program called Little Phonics for Little Folks, and it had all three of my kids reading at a second to third grade level when we were done, which was at the end of first grade for all three of my kids. All three of my kidlets are awesome readers as a result of this program. Even if you aren't catholic, you can still use it -- I can't recommend it enough. I would use it again today. The last thing we did was let our kids play video games. We told them they couldn't play unless they could read the text to play without mom or dad. Talk about motivation!!
We used Click n Read with my 6 y.o. last year. I like it, and he does, too. It is a little repetitive in that each lesson pretty much follows the same pattern, but it's pretty economical and he's definitely learned from it. We'll pick it up again when we start back in two weeks.
I haven't used either the Click n Read (acutally never heard of it) or the Tag, but with my oldest we had a LeapPad... which they have now replaced with the Tag... and although he loved playing with it, I'm not so sure it taught him much about reading because he didn't have to try to sound out the words, he just ran his little wand over it and wala, no work needed on his part... funny, he is still like that, if I don't take the answers out of the back of a book he will just cheat his way through the thing, darn lazy kid..lol. I know that not all kids look to take the easy way out, but I know my son does.
This may sound a little odd, but my 6 yr old also has had trouble with the phonics approach and we use The Reading Lesson and Dick and Jane books. He learns more by a sight word approach. We are still doing phonics with the Reading Lesson which is very laid back. I don't want to break the rules so I can't post a link yet but you can search and it will come up with their site. It is a book with 20 lessons. The lessons are all lots of pages so it is definitely a full course. It is definitely helping my son who did Saxon in K at public school. We also read Dick and Jane to build his confidence. We love Dick and Jane. I picked up one of the Storybook Treasure books. You can get them at most book stores and Walmart and Target. We do the Reading Lesson during school time and I let him read Dick and Jane to me at bed time. He reads as much or as little as he wants of Dick and Jane. So far he has completed one whole book within the Treasure of Dick and Jane and it has made the biggest difference in his confidence. Anyway, that is what we use with my son who does not do well with just phonics. The Taylors
