Early Reading Lessons

One of my New Year resolutions this year is to be more diligent in teaching my children. BabyD is no more a baby. He is turning 3 years old in a few days. His status has been upgraded to become KokoD2. Just in case you didn't know, "koko" means "big brother" in chinese.

Anyway, I've been feeling a bit bad coz' he learns really quickly and my slack means he can't progress as quickly. At this young age, he already knows the sounds of all the alphabets. He can also identify all the letters - small and capital. His counting is excellent. He loves numbers. He will sometimes count beyond 20. His pencil control is also quite good. He colors very well for his age -- tries to keep it inside the lines. He can write the numbers 1-4. Don't get me wrong, I'm not telling you this to show that he is a genius or anything. Just to demonstrate that with proper guidance, really young children can learn quickly.

Well, I've decided to start him reading. I'm starting him on recognizing whole words. I'll still continue with phonics such as identifying initial sounds. But at this age, he can't blend sounds yet. So, we'll do memorizing whole words first. I've written down on cards two very simple and common words: "the" and "is". I've put them on the wall where he can see them. I print out text from his favorite books and nursery rhymes that contain those words and have him search for those words. When he finds those words on the paper, I have him color them. Also when we read books, I have him point out those words.

He gets so excited when he finds those words he can read. Take a look at the video below.



Mama's Parenting Tip

• Read to your children often.
  
• Starfall.com is a wonderful website for early reading.
• Learning to read with phonics is one method. Reading using whole words is another. I like to use both.
• Do a lot of pre-reading activities and games with your children.
• Click here for more reading and literacy tips.