4 YO Says She Wants to Learn To Read. What Do I Teach Her?

[Anonymous]

My older child just learned to read and my younger child wants to do whatever her big brother does. No clue if she’s actual ready.

The problem is, I learned to read when “context clues” were all the rage, and we spent no time on phonics or anything that’s now considered best practice.

I’d love any suggestions for fun ways to introduce (pre?)reading skills. I don’t care if she actually reads at four, just looking for something that she’ll consider interesting.

[Anonymous]

Where is she at now? Does she know all the upper and lowercase letters, and the sound associated with them? If so, get some BOB books and see if she’d like to start sounding them out.

If she doesn’t have all the letters/sounds yet, just work on that. Jack Hartmann has some great sing along videos for this, including some that will teach long and short vowels and other common alternate sounds. Do that until she has it down, then use BOB books to introduce sounding out cvc words.

[Anonymous]

Don’t worry about phonics. Get the books of Pig and the Elephant,very simple and perfect for learning how to read at a young age. Just read to her pointing the words while youread. Very soon she will conbect words and dounds. It worked wonders with my own kid

[Anonymous]

Play rhyming games with her and teach her the letter sounds.

This website has a free app with the letter sounds. It's easy for adults to forget that some letters have multiple sounds. C doesn't just make the sound like in cat, but also an s sound like in face.

https://www.allaboutlearningpress.com/phonogram-sounds-app/

[Anonymous]

I would suggest buying the how to read in 100 easy lessons book. Even if you only get through a few lessons it’s good foundational phonics and pre reading skills.

[Anonymous]

OP here, thanks for the ideas!

[Anonymous]

First teach upper case letters, then lower case letters, but (IMPORTANT) do not use the official name of each letter. Instead, use the sound each letter makes. Both C and K are called “kuh”. For vowels, use only the short vowel sound, not the long vowel sound.

Once they know the sounds, teach the basic Phonics sounds and also how to sound out simple phonetic words. Lots of choices for materials, but we used the “Jolly Phonics” materials. Others might also be good.

Then, go to the “Bob Books” series, doing each one in sequence. These are simplified phonetic readers to teach decoding. Have DC Read a little - 3-4 pages - each day for 7 days a week - out loud to you.

Then move to decodable readers. We used the Jolly Phonics readers for this step. Again, read a few pages every day out loud to you.

Of course, you also should be reading to DC every day. We do it just before bed, but anytime can work, as long as it is every day.

[Anonymous]

My 4 year old asked me to teach her how to read during the pandemic. After she had all of the letter sounds down (not the names, the sounds they say), and she could blend two sounds together, we worked through most of the Bob books, then the easy level one readers.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:First teach upper case letters, then lower case letters, but (IMPORTANT) do not use the official name of each letter. Instead, use the sound each letter makes. Both C and K are called “kuh”. For vowels, use only the short vowel sound, not the long vowel sound.

Once they know the sounds, teach the basic Phonics sounds and also how to sound out simple phonetic words. Lots of choices for materials, but we used the “Jolly Phonics” materials. Others might also be good.

Then, go to the “Bob Books” series, doing each one in sequence. These are simplified phonetic readers to teach decoding. Have DC Read a little - 3-4 pages - each day for 7 days a week - out loud to you.

Then move to decodable readers. We used the Jolly Phonics readers for this step. Again, read a few pages every day out loud to you.

Of course, you also should be reading to DC every day. We do it just before bed, but anytime can work, as long as it is every day.

Don't add a schwa sound at the end of letter sounds. Don't say "kuh" because when kids spell they'll think they have to add a "u". Clip the consonant so you just hear the /k/ or make the /p/ sound like a small breath, not "puh"

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Don’t worry about phonics. Get the books of Pig and the Elephant,very simple and perfect for learning how to read at a young age. Just read to her pointing the words while youread. Very soon she will conbect words and dounds. It worked wonders with my own kid

I think this works with some kids, but highly disagree that you don't need to worry about phonics. Phonics creates the strongest readers and the most independent readers fastest. There is literally no downside to giving them an early, strong foundation in phonics, and a precocious, interested 4 year old will run with it and develop reading fluency on their own.

[Anonymous]

Buy the book “teach your child to read in 100 easy lessons”. I taught all my kids to read at 4 with it. It was effortless. And a great phonics for when they start teaching them poorly in school. The way school teaches without phonics is crazy.

[Anonymous]

My kid learned phonics by looking at words while I read aloud slowly and pointed. It won’t work for every single person, but it works for most.

Human brains are primed for language.

[Anonymous]

Wonderful, OP! DD was the same - as soon as her older brother could do something, she stretched to be able to do it too

Does her preschool help with pre-reading techniques? My kids went to a Montessori that taught kids to read at 5, but introduced them to phonetic groups and short, easy words at 4. I reinforced phonemes at home and provided more practice with basic pre-reader books like this series, much more appealing than Bob books:

https://www.amazon.com/Miss-Rhondas-Readers-Set-ONE/dp/1881511103/ref=sr_1_1?hvadid=282626163721&hvdev=c&hvlocphy=9007537&hvnetw=g&hvqmt=e&hvrand=10628142261457689062&hvtargid=kwd-307132705800&hydadcr=16841_10298664&keywords=miss+rhonda%27s+readers&qid=1688750822&s=books&sr=1-1

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My kid learned phonics by looking at words while I read aloud slowly and pointed. It won’t work for every single person, but it works for most.

Human brains are primed for language.

It's better if someone actually learns phonics and the rules behind language. Like adding an e to the end of words changes the vowel sound. Like ton vs tone.

Considering that schools are really struggling with illiteracy right now, humans aren't primed for reading. Language, yes.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Buy the book “teach your child to read in 100 easy lessons”. I taught all my kids to read at 4 with it. It was effortless. And a great phonics for when they start teaching them poorly in school. The way school teaches without phonics is crazy.

This. My second child also really wanted to learn to read when her big brother did. I bought this book when she was 4ish and she was reading in no time (I never pushed her to do the lessons, it was all her!) I asked my son’s former K teacher about it and she said it was a good, phonics based approach. I didn’t want to teach her with something that would screw things up for when she would be learning in K.