begining to read

[nhmom0608]

Looking for a little advice on how to help my 4 year old daughter. She just turned 4 on Oct 27 and has just started reading. She has always shown a real readiness to read since early on so I knew she was ready to start. I have been letting her play on the starfall website and that seemed to really kick start the process but the best thing has been the old Dick and Jane books! They have such a great way of starting slow with simple sentences and gradually adding new words that she can already read through a few of the storys wth no problems.
I guess my question is what should I do to encourage her more and keep her challanged? she isnt in preschool yet, she has been going to an inhome daycare but will stop soon and stay home with me and her 2 1/2 year old brother. should I put her in preschool? we do workbooks together but they are pre-K should I try getting her some harder ones?
Any advice is appriciated, i feel like i am her only teacher right now and I dont want to mess it up!

[michelle vallene]

Hi
I think it is great that you are wanting to help your children learn early reading skills before they enter school. Those early years are so critical. I am an elementary teacher, author, early learning expert, and mother of three. I am also a board member for the Foundation for Early Learning. Starfall is a wonderful website and reading books to your kids is excellent. Singing nursery rhymes together is also a fun way to build literacy skills. Studies have shown that young children's exposure to nursery rhymes directly correlates to their future reading abilities. There are also many low/no cost reading activities that you can do together such as having your child finger paint in shaving cream on the kitchen table. They can practice letters, words, etc. in a fun and interactive way. You can have your child go on a letter/word hunt around the house or in the yard. Write letters or words on notecards and hide them around the house or out in your yard. Have them search for the cards and when they find one have them say the name of the letter and its sound or say and spell the word. You can also play the "Mystery Bag" game by placing a few everyday household objects into a bag and have your child pull one out. Have them say the name of the object and tell you the letter and sound that it starts with. There are so many fun ways to play with letters, words, and books to help your child with early reading skills and build an enjoyment of and excitement for reading. You can check out my website www.LearnersLane.com for many free downloads and activities and you can check out my newly published book "What Children Need to Learn to Read" for additional parent tips, games, activities, songs, rhymes, checklists, recommended books and websites and so much more. Good luck and feel free to contact me anytime with any questions you may have at mvallene@LearnersLane.com
Sincerely,
Michelle Vallene

[lisayvonne]

DD learns to read by using beestar. It offers online reading worksheets, full of interesting stories and cute pictures. Every worksheet includes 10 questions and is timed. This is challenging for her. Since there are many beestar kids, I can find out where DD has been.
Lisa

[MichaelTJones]

Hello! My name's Michael and I have something that will clarify some of the things you are wondering about.

Me and my wife are about to conceive and I can barely wait for my children to grow up so I can teach them all of the things I know.

I have been working with the son of a friend of mine who's 3 and a half teaching him all kid of things. Teaching him to read so he can acquire more information has been an absolute pleasure and his father couldn't be more happy having a linguist working with his young one. Recently I wrote an article about beginning to read, called "The Reading Age is right now!" http://www.squidoo.com/Reading-Age-is-Right-Now and in it I talk about some of the things you are wondering about right now.

I'll keep it short, but just know that by you asking these kinds of questions, you can be sure that your daughter will have a very good education as she has a very good mother who thinks about these things. I found that this is the biggest step and it's one you don't even need to make.

Just read my article if you have the time and use your intuition in providing her all the content she likes as this time is for her a time of massive cerebral growth. If she has resources available, it will surprise you how fast she can learn as she builds a massive amount of neural cortical pathways every night.

[hazuzu]

I have two homeschooled kids and I find that they love Cackleberries, at http://bit.ly/lbcp2011
They have practiced some reading there. The site is interactive and growing all the time. Maybe your
kids would like it.

[Rikki]

I've been learning more and more about children that struggle when learning to read because they have issues beyond phonetics or comprehension. In some cases, there are visual problems, but in other cases there are problems from light sensitivity or glare from white pages under florescent lights. In more extreme cases, some children have visual processing disorders. My neighbor's daughter reads with colored filters and they help her immensely. At my daughter's school, other children use colored overlays which also make reading easier. Apparently for many young readers, a change of color can be a major factor.