So I was online looking for materials to get for Kobe to help him start learning letter sounds, he knows the ABC song but I want to start teaching him each letter individually and the sound it makes. I did this with Katie when she was 3 & she was reading by age 4, which *I* thought was fairly early. I stumbled across this website and am just shocked! There is video of a 16 month old reading 40 words! Check it out: http://www.brillkids.com/little-reader/index.php
So now I'm not sure if I should teach Kobe the same way I did Katie or if I should try this program. And if I try the Brillkids program, should I try teaching Kaleb too??! That seems nuts to me but you can't argue with the video and testimonials on their site. Has anyone ever heard of this or known anyone who did it?
3 comments:
I think reading at age 4 is early, but is becoming the "norm" these days. Nathan is reading, but he'll be 5 next month. There's a mom in my moms group whose 2.5yr can read simple books. So I thought that was pretty impressive. Maddie can recognize all her letters, but doesn't know the correct sound to associate with each letter. Hopefully she'll be reading at age 4 as well.
I don't know if you need to do something different unless it doesn't seem to work as well for Kobe as it did for Katie. Why spend money if you don't need to? The end result is that Kobe learns to read. As far a Kaleb goes, yes that would be neat if he was reading at age 2, but in the long run research has shown that most kids tend to even-out or "catch-up" with their early reading peers by 2nd or 3rd grade. So unless Kaleb is a genius, you have to ask yourself how much do you really think it will benefit him by teaching him to read so early on. But that's just my 2 cents after reading a lot of research on the subject (yes I was neurotic about having Nathan learn to read at age 4 can you tell..LOL). It also helps that my BFF is has a Masters in teaching and her emphasis is elementary reading skills.
Sounds similar to My baby can read program that is running promotional ads on TV. My Mum taught me to read with flash cards when I was about 3 years old so when I went to school (4 years in Scotland and how my birthday fell in the year), I was a pretty fluent reader. I actually remember reading with my Mum when I was young - 'Shoudler' was my favourite word as it was the longest one in the flash card series.
I have dropped the ball with Logan on this and should have had him reading by now too. He knows all his letter sounds and is sounding out words when we read at bedtime, but he's not reading words so much on his own.
I think you can pretty much do the same with your own homemade flash cards without any expensive software or 'program' materials. Just some paper, a pen and some time is all it takes.
We did a similar program with our daughter (our second child) soon after her brain injury. She was 4 and it was part of her therapy program that we did with her. We used the "How To Multiply Your Baby's Intelligence" theory (Glen Doman) which included "How To Teach Your Baby Math" and "How to Teach Your Baby to Read" and other books. We made the flashcards ourselves. She did learn to read very quickly using this program. She went into regular kindergarten and could read much better than the kids in her class (who were not brain injured!)
Since these programs teach by sight-reading, the only drawback to using it is that the kids do not learn phonics and therefore are not able to sound-out words. My daughter struggled with "guessing" at new words by the way they looked or reminded her of another word. For example, she would read the word "ballroom" as "balloon" or the word "shellfish" as "selfish" or the word "magnetic" as "magic" -- things like that. I would say that to teach with a sight-reading program alone is not good, but perhaps to mix a bit of phonics in with it is the way to go.
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