Ana... oy.

[conuly]

If you let her, she'll con you into reading to her. DO NOT LET HER DO THIS.

Do you know what her bedtime reading list was tonight? 12 books long. That's what. And one of those books was Harold and the Purple Crayon, which is quite long for her. I'm starting to worry if reading to her was the good idea I had originally thought it to be...

Incidentally, she now knows how to play Ring Around the Rosie (which has nothing to do with the plague, contrary to popular belief). It took a few false starts, because I'd say "All fall down" and tell her to sit, but usually when we tell her to sit she's being punished, so....

Edit: The full reading list for tonight was...

Green Hat, Blue Hat (Sandra Boynton, tonight's light reading)
One, Two, Three (also Sandra Boynton)
Hippos Go Berserk (ditto)
Pajama Time (and again)
The Going to Bed Book (last one by Boynton)
Harold and the Purple Crayon
One Duck Stuck
Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What do you see?
Guess How Much I Love You (another fairly lengthy book)
Good Night, Mr. Night
The Napping House
My Many Colored Days

AND she got tucked in with a book as well.

Edit again: I just checked up on her. She literally fell asleep with her book open and her nose inside.

Comments

[leora.livejournal.com]

It may be a PITA, but she'll probably grow up to be an avid reader. :)

[conuly]

Great. Then I'll have another book-thief to contend with.

[conuly]

My mom thinks she's actually ready for pre-reading now, though. You know, you point to the next word, and she says it (really because it's predictable and you've read the book 100 times, but it helps the connection to readingreading)

[leora.livejournal.com]

Neat :) Does she know her letters? It won't make the whole thing click, but I think it helps when you combine the two. I'm also a big fan of phonics systems for when she's older. I don't think anyone ever did prereading with me. People tried to teach me, but they taught me very badly and just made me frustrated and irritable. But my first grade teacher was great, and used a phonics method, and then I started picking it up quickly.

Although if you really want her to learn how to read a few words, I learned the word "lighter" much earlier, and all it took was me burning the top off my thumb one time. Hmmm, on second thought, I don't recommend that method. *G*

[conuly]

She has letter magnets, but she's not even two. We're not rushing her.

My mom isn't a fan of the phonics system. Not because she doesn't like phonology, but because the earliest words a child learns to read don't follow any sort of rules - do, go. To, too, two. Snow, plow. She figures it's a better system for other languages than for English. She did a lot of teaching/tutoring over the years, so I trust her opinion.

[leora.livejournal.com]

What method does she prefer?

And yeah, no need to rush her.

When I say phonics-based system, I don't mean a formal hooked on phonics thing, just teaching that talks about the way the sounds fit together. And the problems you state is exactly why it was the system that worked for me. My teacher taught me that the same letters could make multiple different sounds. You learn the different possibilities, try them out, and see which ones work. If you just learn the sounds of the letters as they teach them at early ages, reading is useless. 'ph' and 'th' won't make any sentence and your vowels will be wrong a lot of the time. Whereas, if you learn that the sounds of the letters are affected by the letters around them, and sometimes htey're just weird, but they are weird in mostly predictable ways, then you can learn to read.

Memorizing words doesn't work very well, and horribly for me. And the Seasame Street approach of c-a-t cah-uh-tuh drove me nuts and had me wanting to smash things. Because no matter how fast you say cahuhtuh, it's not an English word. So, they always went:

c - a - t
cah - uh - tuh
cah-uh-tuh
cahuhtuh
cat

Which to me was
c - a - t
cah uh tuh
cah-uh-tuh
cahuhtuh
*then someone who already knows what the word is says it in a way that does not in any way relate to anything that went before in the scene*

Just a personal rant. That really annoyed me when I was growing up. They never mentioned you need to drop the extra bits of sound that aren't actually part of the word and they have you say just to confuse you. My nephew learned soundabits, which is letter clusters as a step toward reading, and that seemed good. Things like "eat" then you learn "heat", "meat", "wheat", "seat", etc.

[conuly]

Reading a lot to the kid, pointing out words, having the kid recite more and more of the book while pointing at the words.

[leora.livejournal.com]

Hmmm , okay. I don't like that method though. I'm fairly sure it wouldn't work on me, at least it'd take much, much longer. It's closer to the methods that didn't work. I did memorize a few words, like my name. But they didn't bring me any closer to being able to read. And while that method tends to work for most children, it tends to be more likely to fail. The kids who don't have difficulty tend to learn by any method. The kids who do have difficulty tend to learn best with a more phonics-based approach. At least, so says the web site on disabilities and teaching my course directed me to (although I don't fully trust it as it also said some stupid things) and my personal experience.

[gingembre.livejournal.com]

To clarify, my mom is not anti-phonics, she just believes it shouldn't be taught in isolation. This stems in large part from the fact that she is against people being taught to read word by word rather than sentences or phrases at a time. She believes the word-by-word method slows you down considerably.

[leora.livejournal.com]

Ah, that makes sense, and I agree with it.

[cumaeansibyl.livejournal.com]

Don't rush her, surely, but at the same time kids can learn a lot earlier than we give them credit for -- she may be interested. I learned to read when I was about three, which isn't the youngest I've heard, but still younger than most.

[conuly]

I was reading at three as well. I have a friend who was reading by two, probably, in fact, by 18 months. I give them credit for a lot.