Did you teach your child how to read?

[shygirl]

We've got this fantastic fridge magnet toy which definitely helped get Babybartfast reading early.  (She started sounding out words at around 3.5; now at age 4.5 she's reading easy books all by herself and slightly harder books with help.)  There are ton of alphabet-related toys out there, but you can put any three letters in this one and it will read the resulting word back to you.  It's got a pretty big library of real three-letter words in there, too, so if your kid puts in a real word it will acknowledge it and make some sort of sound effect (like a meow for "CAT").  It will also acknowledge three-letter words which aren't phonetically obvious, like "eat" or "ice."  Babybartfast spent HOURS playing with it while I was cooking dinners, and she really loved discovering new words.  I don't think it's the only thing that led to her reading development, of course, but it definitely helped a lot.

Ooh, that toy looks great!  He already loves playing with magnets on the fridge, so this looks perfect!

Softly Spoken, your post made me smile!  Thanks for all the suggestions.  I am going to look for them at the library.  Heck, I'll probably end up buying them!

Personally, I think reading to your children is about the best thing you can do for them.  I just love it when my son comes toddling over holding a book and his blanket and says "can we READ now?".  I never say no.  I do have to get him a haircut though.  He's got an afro going on now, and it's hard to see the book around his big head and hair.

I've always read to and with my children and have lovely memories us us snuggled up breathlessly waiting for the next page. My son just picked it up as we went along and was reading well by the time he started school but I still laugh when I remember his little sister at nearly 3 barrelling in with one of his school readers, pushing it into my hands and with her hands on her hips demanding, "Teach me to read, RIGHT NOW!.

So I did.

They were very different though, even though he could read well my son loved being read to at night after he'd finished his own reader and would plead in desperation for the next chapter while I recall his sister cheerfully telling me one night after only a few pages "that was quite enough, I have a short attention span you know".

Ha ha, your daughter is hilarious!

[Piratelvr1121]

We didn't teach our boys to read, but we did read to them a great deal and they loved being read to until they were old enough to do it themselves. And my middle child likes to listen in when I'm reading to the toddler.   Who loves books. He'll pick them up, carry them around, look at the pictures and hand them to you to read to him.  And when you pick him up, put him in your lap and open the book, you get a delightful excited giggle. 

Course he only lets you read about two pages before he's closing the books on your fingers, then opening it, then closing it but that's really just part of the development too.  I also read a lot. I have a Kindle and remember a year ago I was sitting on the ground at a softball practice DH had, holding the babe as I read and he was staring at the Kindle screen, fascinated.

[The Wild One, Forever]

I didn't "teach him to read" exactly, but he picked it up, very early and quickly,by osmosis or something.  Reading to him was something we did from the time he was an infant, and we also constantly sang to him, which I have since learned helps foster language development.  By age four, he could read anything he wanted to.  It's gratifying to me that he loves to read. 

[Deetee]

Children's brains are interesting. I thought my daughter might be an early reader. She knew all the letters of the alphabet at just over two years and I remember thinking that was most of reading. But two years later she does not read. Her grandparents keep thinking she can because she can write but oddly reading and writing seem to be different skills.  So she will practice writing for ages ( in four year old time so half an hour) and copy words letter for letter but it is a recognition of the shapes not the words as a whole.

So just my two cents that alphabet to reading is not linear.

(However I don't push it. We read every night and I answer questions but when I feel teachy we do math, not reading as I find that more interesting and useful. )

[jpcher]

Personally, I think reading to your children is about the best thing you can do for them.  I just love it when my son comes toddling over holding a book and his blanket and says "can we READ now?".  I never say no.

I totally, 100%, no holds barred, completely agree with the bold above.

I read to my DDs every night before bedtime. One poster mentioned the importance of letting the child see the book/written pages while you are reading to them. I agree with this. When the DDs and I were cuddled up with a big picture book and written words, it wasn't uncommon for them to point to a word and ask "What does this say?"

Even when they were babies, after a feeding, I would pull out a small book "A is for apple, Z is for Zebra" while I lulled them to sleep.


I don't think that I taught them to read. (eta: but I gave them a step-up when they started to learn to read in k-garten.)


I think that giving the child (2 years old) a strong introduction on the alphabet and an understanding that letters put together make a word is what's important.

[kherbert05]

Please teach him to love books, cuddle up with you and read. Sing silly songs, make a big deal of reading signs. If he picks up on words and sound and mimics you great. Sing with him, dance with him, take him outside to enjoy nature. Playing = learning at this age. He is going to get much more learning by going to the store with you or going on a walk for an hour than spending that same time doing flash cards.

Please don't hot house him with formal lessons. His brain hasn't finish hooking all the language and symbolic language parts up yet. That will happen as he plays and listens to you read to him. Hot house kids bloom fast - but it fades. They don't associate books with fun, warmth, and love but with kill and drill.

[shygirl]

Please teach him to love books, cuddle up with you and read. Sing silly songs, make a big deal of reading signs. If he picks up on words and sound and mimics you great. Sing with him, dance with him, take him outside to enjoy nature. Playing = learning at this age. He is going to get much more learning by going to the store with you or going on a walk for an hour than spending that same time doing flash cards.

We do all of things, quite a lot.  I'm not planning on hours of reading lessons here, he's 2!  Just something to do sometimes, and if takes to it, then great!  If not, that's okay too.  He has alphabet flashcards already, which he knows quite well, and we might spend 10 minutes a day with them.  Not every day, though.

To be honest, we're going a little stir crazy.  He doesn't go to daycare, and it's been a very cold and snowy winter.  So, just looking for lots of different things we can do together.  I find the day goes by more quickly when we have a bunch of different things to do. 

[MrsJWine]

Please teach him to love books, cuddle up with you and read. Sing silly songs, make a big deal of reading signs. If he picks up on words and sound and mimics you great. Sing with him, dance with him, take him outside to enjoy nature. Playing = learning at this age. He is going to get much more learning by going to the store with you or going on a walk for an hour than spending that same time doing flash cards.

Please don't hot house him with formal lessons. His brain hasn't finish hooking all the language and symbolic language parts up yet. That will happen as he plays and listens to you read to him. Hot house kids bloom fast - but it fades. They don't associate books with fun, warmth, and love but with kill and drill.

I think this is a bit of an over-generalization. From the OP, I got the impression that he wants to learn how to read, and that she's trying to find ways to facilitate that. Not that she will sit him down and make him learn. Kids who have skills pounded into them before they're mentally ready for it will associate it with drudgery, but I think if a kid wants to learn this early, why stop him? I learned to read sometime around my 3rd birthday. I'm not a spectacular genius, but I do still love reading. It's brought me years and years of enjoyment.

[MonteCristo]

I have a 2 year old, he'll be 3 in July.  He already knows all the letters in the alphabet really well.  Even though he is still pretty young, I figured I'll go ahead and teach him the sounds the letters make.  It appears he already knows that, at least the basics.  I'm not certain where he learned it. Probably some of the "educational" tv shows he watches with my husband during the day.

So, then, I thought, well if he already knows what sounds the letters make, then I guess I may as well start teaching him how to put sounds together and read a word.  But once I started doing that, I got really confused because letters make different sounds depending on what combination they are in.  I didn't know exactly what the beginning is.  Also, vowels are confusing.

I thought I would buy some flash cards.  I went to Target just now, and the only flash cards they had was learning by sight.  They didn't have phonics flash cards.  Is learning by sight the new thing now?  Memorizing whole words? 

SO, then I googled how to teach a child to read.  Lots and lots of websites popped up.  Too much to look at.

Anybody here teach their child how to read?  Can you recommend any products?  Methods?

The best book I know of is "How to Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons".  We've used it to teach the 7 youngest to read, it is very easy to use (and it explains everything to the teacher) and the kids loved it.  You can get it from Amazon.

[bopper]

I was going to suggest the BOB books as well for teaching reading.

Also just read to him alot as well.

Keep in mind that you know that different letters have different sounds....like mat and mate. 
But for a child, they start with a simple model and then build off of it.
So for animals at first everything with 4 legs is a dog.  Then they learn about horses and cows.  Then they learn that there are different breeds of horses.

Same with reading. The Bob books start with the short vowels at first and then move on. Also there are sight words (like "the").  The more difficult words will come later as he refines his reading.

[Betelnut]

I've read to my daughter (practically) every night of her life since I adopted her at age 18 months.  Usually from 2-3 books a night. She can, at age 7 and in first grade, barely read. 

Oh she can sound out words, etc. but she just doesn't "get it" yet.  It takes her many minutes to read a book and sometimes will stumble over a word that she read just fine on a previous page.

So I'm not sure reading alone actually teaches a kid anything except to enjoy stories and books which she does.  If I read them.

I'm sort of discouraged and sad that she isn't reading fluently or easily yet.  According to the teacher she is "at grade level" which I guess means that 1st graders really aren't supposed to be very good readers--because she isn't.  As a lifelong reader and bookworm, it is discouraging.

[Deetee]

I've read to my daughter (practically) every night of her life since I adopted her at age 18 months.  Usually from 2-3 books a night. She can, at age 7 and in first grade, barely read. 

Oh she can sound out words, etc. but she just doesn't "get it" yet.  It takes her many minutes to read a book and sometimes will stumble over a word that she read just fine on a previous page.

So I'm not sure reading alone actually teaches a kid anything except to enjoy stories and books which she does.  If I read them.

I'm sort of discouraged and sad that she isn't reading fluently or easily yet.  According to the teacher she is "at grade level" which I guess means that 1st graders really aren't supposed to be very good readers--because she isn't.  As a lifelong reader and bookworm, it is discouraging.

This is important because it is worth remembering that kids brains really develope at different rates and in in different areas. I think there is a common misconception that you force learning onto a child when it has to be fairly organic.

My examples are from much older. I am tutoring my 16  year old sister in math. I taught her over a year ago during her last math class. She has had over a year off with no math. She is much better than she was last time despite a complete break from math. Her brain just gets it now.

Another sister never really got school and barely finished high school. 10 years later she is taking university courses and doing very well. It was a bit of an extreme example, but her brain just needed some extra time to mature.

[Mikayla]

Just an idea for reading encouragement further down the road.  My sibs and I are all voracious readers and we trace it back to our parents, who were strict on bedtimes, letting us stay up an hour later if we were reading.  This went back to first grade. 

And, like all kids, we thought anything was better than being told to go to sleep. 

[Cami]

My dd loved books and loved to be read to. She learned to read early, mostly on her own. And...

She has nearly zero interest in reading for pleasure as an adult. None.

So just because a child loves books and reads early, does NOT mean they will grow up to be a reader. There are no guarantees.

[shygirl]

These are interesting points.  I guess as long as he interested, I will teach him what I can.  Even if he later doesn't have a LOVE for reading, I hope that he will at least be able to read well enough.  I'm not going to force him or push reading lessons on him if he'd rather be running around, or doing whatever weird things he likes to do.

I did find some resources at the library though.  One of them was a book filled with a lot of different small rhymes and songs that I can sing to him, complete with hand motions!  I'm learning a lot of new nursery rhymes!  And it looks like it will help improve his vocabulary, which is another good goal.