Helping My Toddler and Preschooler to Read
When I say learning is supposed to be fun, I mean true learning is a discovery process that is quietly exciting. Learning is natural, easy, and occurs when you least expect it. Kids learn at lightning speed. Within a few months they can walk, talk, and do all manner of interesting things.
I will give you a couple of examples from my own life.
.
School wasn't that great when I was a kid (and it's far worse now). But when I had an interest in something, I could learn at lightning speed. I knew all the baseball player's averages, for example. I could tell you the make, model and year of any car on the road. And I knew the frequencies for every major shortwave broadcaster from around the world. Why? Because I was interested in these subjects.
I know you can think of similar examples from your own life: things you were genuinely interested in, and how much fun it was to learn about them effortlessly. I never studied cars in school, or shortwave radio, or baseball; but I knew more than my parents or any of my teachers about these topics.
I know you can also think of areas where your kids just naturally have an interest, and they can spend hours learning informally. And afterwards they are not frustrated or fatigued.
.
Let's take reading, for example. Many public schools are still using the wrong teaching methods for reading. Usually it's some variation of the so called whole language thing (I'm sure they have given it some other name now so that it is disguised). This horrible method makes kids try to recognize whole words instead of using phonics.
When my son was about three, I was at the radio station waiting for my radio program to start. I happened to notice a little brochure someone had left on the table. It was an ad for a certain phonics video. I live life intuitively, and something wordlessly told me to pick up one of the brochures. Following my intuition, I went ahead and ordered it.
There was something magic about this video (I've since done some research and other parents have confirmed it). My son watched it a few times, and knew the letters and sounds (just by watching and listening). Let me repeat: my son watched it a few times, and knew the sounds each letter makes.
Unfortunately, this video/DVD is hard to find, but I don't want to get too hung up about this particular one, because if you grasp how to make beginning phonics fun, a song, fast, interesting, and easy listening, your child will have fun and pick up the info within a few days.
I can't even tell you how my son began to read, but I can say it just happened and it happened fast, within a month or so. I got him a couple of books (like Goodnight Moon). I spent some time with him, and one thing led to another and before you knew it, he was reading.
He had a library card before he was five years old. He read The Boxcar Children, The Hardy Boys, Children's Highlights magazine, and Junior Classics. In my book, I will tell you more, but the bottom line is: he loved to read. Why? Because it was fun. It opened up a world of adventure.
He's now all grown up and attending college with a 4.0 GPA .
Here are some guiding principles:
1. If you do a lot of reading yourself and have a lot of books everywhere around the house, your example is probably the biggest guarantee of your child's loving to read too.
2. If you don't see yourself as being the one to teach your child to read, and you leave instruction to the so called experts and educators, there is a chance that the magical fun and delight in learning to read could be ruined.
All it takes is a wrong method, an impatient teacher, fear, some form of cruelty, peer group pressure, a scary school environment for issues to develop or even learning blocks. Just read the literacy statistics about how after years in school, many kids are reading below or way below grade level (which is low enough already). Something is wrong.
Google some stories about high school graduates who can't read their diplomas. Talk to community college English teachers and see what they face with incoming students some of which need remedial reading before they can even get into remedial English!
Of course, a loving and savvy reading coach can help someone of any age start reading. If the person does not have too many learning blocks from time spent in the destructive school environment--then within a few weeks, with some luck and patience, the harm can be partially undone. Hey, some people survive school, and despite school, teach themselves how to read.
But my point is: why let the harm be done in the first place. If you child learns at home how to read and then begins to read (and be read to) fun stories, he or she will be hooked on reading for life.
That is why I am focusing on preschool when the child has not yet had her love of learning destroyed or dampened by a bureaucratic structure. So I will continue. . . .
3. Have the thick cardboard books for one and two year olds to play with. Don't try to make them read, just let them play with the books. Let them play with your books too. Just don't give them your antique books, since there will be pages ripped out and others marked with crayons.
4. Phonics, phonics, phonics, phonics. Let me say it another way: phonics, phonics, phonics.
Okay, now I've made my point. But here is a critical point: Not just any phonics.
I had my epiphany (my aha moment) a couple of months ago. I was on the internet researching
phonics courses. I encountered an educator who wrote on her site that she had found the best phonics course of all. I was intrigued, so I followed the link to a website by another educator for educators.
The course was the most awful thing I have ever seen. It was all lesson plans, complex verbiage, learning outcomes, and so on. It was what seemed like hundreds of pages long, and consisted of weekly lesson plans that dragged the course on for months.
It was so rigid, so boring, and so drawn out that all it could possibly do ruin the learning process.
It was laid out in a schedule of lessons that would take months for what should take a couple of weeks!
My great insight was this: What some educator thinks is the best phonics program may not be what is really a good program that will be fun, fast, and will really work.
The other pitfall to watch out for is the emphasis of visuals for what is really a listening experience. This is counter intuitive, because reading is, after all, a visual medium.
But hear me out. How do kids learn to speak and understand the language? By hearing people speak. The child hears, imitates, and no one knows how it comes to pass, but will be talking your ears off before long.
So, because of today's infatuation with fancy visuals and computers, some phonics programs have the kid at a computer clicking on images and so on.
What they are learning is how to click on images and make different things appear.
About the only thing that will happen is that the child will have his or her attention span shortened (the average person spends 9 seconds on each website).
So make it fun to listen to. The visual aspect is just basically holding up the small letter to see with each part of the song. Kids love to hear, imitate, memorize, and sing.
A fun fast paced DVD/video is best. One that is very simple. Make it into a song.
I will give you a couple of examples from my own life.
.
School wasn't that great when I was a kid (and it's far worse now). But when I had an interest in something, I could learn at lightning speed. I knew all the baseball player's averages, for example. I could tell you the make, model and year of any car on the road. And I knew the frequencies for every major shortwave broadcaster from around the world. Why? Because I was interested in these subjects.
I know you can think of similar examples from your own life: things you were genuinely interested in, and how much fun it was to learn about them effortlessly. I never studied cars in school, or shortwave radio, or baseball; but I knew more than my parents or any of my teachers about these topics.
I know you can also think of areas where your kids just naturally have an interest, and they can spend hours learning informally. And afterwards they are not frustrated or fatigued.
.
Let's take reading, for example. Many public schools are still using the wrong teaching methods for reading. Usually it's some variation of the so called whole language thing (I'm sure they have given it some other name now so that it is disguised). This horrible method makes kids try to recognize whole words instead of using phonics.
When my son was about three, I was at the radio station waiting for my radio program to start. I happened to notice a little brochure someone had left on the table. It was an ad for a certain phonics video. I live life intuitively, and something wordlessly told me to pick up one of the brochures. Following my intuition, I went ahead and ordered it.
There was something magic about this video (I've since done some research and other parents have confirmed it). My son watched it a few times, and knew the letters and sounds (just by watching and listening). Let me repeat: my son watched it a few times, and knew the sounds each letter makes.
Unfortunately, this video/DVD is hard to find, but I don't want to get too hung up about this particular one, because if you grasp how to make beginning phonics fun, a song, fast, interesting, and easy listening, your child will have fun and pick up the info within a few days.
I can't even tell you how my son began to read, but I can say it just happened and it happened fast, within a month or so. I got him a couple of books (like Goodnight Moon). I spent some time with him, and one thing led to another and before you knew it, he was reading.
He had a library card before he was five years old. He read The Boxcar Children, The Hardy Boys, Children's Highlights magazine, and Junior Classics. In my book, I will tell you more, but the bottom line is: he loved to read. Why? Because it was fun. It opened up a world of adventure.
He's now all grown up and attending college with a 4.0 GPA .
Here are some guiding principles:
1. If you do a lot of reading yourself and have a lot of books everywhere around the house, your example is probably the biggest guarantee of your child's loving to read too.
2. If you don't see yourself as being the one to teach your child to read, and you leave instruction to the so called experts and educators, there is a chance that the magical fun and delight in learning to read could be ruined.
All it takes is a wrong method, an impatient teacher, fear, some form of cruelty, peer group pressure, a scary school environment for issues to develop or even learning blocks. Just read the literacy statistics about how after years in school, many kids are reading below or way below grade level (which is low enough already). Something is wrong.
Google some stories about high school graduates who can't read their diplomas. Talk to community college English teachers and see what they face with incoming students some of which need remedial reading before they can even get into remedial English!
Of course, a loving and savvy reading coach can help someone of any age start reading. If the person does not have too many learning blocks from time spent in the destructive school environment--then within a few weeks, with some luck and patience, the harm can be partially undone. Hey, some people survive school, and despite school, teach themselves how to read.
But my point is: why let the harm be done in the first place. If you child learns at home how to read and then begins to read (and be read to) fun stories, he or she will be hooked on reading for life.
That is why I am focusing on preschool when the child has not yet had her love of learning destroyed or dampened by a bureaucratic structure. So I will continue. . . .
3. Have the thick cardboard books for one and two year olds to play with. Don't try to make them read, just let them play with the books. Let them play with your books too. Just don't give them your antique books, since there will be pages ripped out and others marked with crayons.
4. Phonics, phonics, phonics, phonics. Let me say it another way: phonics, phonics, phonics.
Okay, now I've made my point. But here is a critical point: Not just any phonics.
I had my epiphany (my aha moment) a couple of months ago. I was on the internet researching
phonics courses. I encountered an educator who wrote on her site that she had found the best phonics course of all. I was intrigued, so I followed the link to a website by another educator for educators.
The course was the most awful thing I have ever seen. It was all lesson plans, complex verbiage, learning outcomes, and so on. It was what seemed like hundreds of pages long, and consisted of weekly lesson plans that dragged the course on for months.
It was so rigid, so boring, and so drawn out that all it could possibly do ruin the learning process.
It was laid out in a schedule of lessons that would take months for what should take a couple of weeks!
My great insight was this: What some educator thinks is the best phonics program may not be what is really a good program that will be fun, fast, and will really work.
The other pitfall to watch out for is the emphasis of visuals for what is really a listening experience. This is counter intuitive, because reading is, after all, a visual medium.
But hear me out. How do kids learn to speak and understand the language? By hearing people speak. The child hears, imitates, and no one knows how it comes to pass, but will be talking your ears off before long.
So, because of today's infatuation with fancy visuals and computers, some phonics programs have the kid at a computer clicking on images and so on.
What they are learning is how to click on images and make different things appear.
About the only thing that will happen is that the child will have his or her attention span shortened (the average person spends 9 seconds on each website).
So make it fun to listen to. The visual aspect is just basically holding up the small letter to see with each part of the song. Kids love to hear, imitate, memorize, and sing.
A fun fast paced DVD/video is best. One that is very simple. Make it into a song.
