Letters everywhere

Not much time to post but I wanted to comment that my daughter is seeing letters everywhere now! She's pointing a T's and P's on stop signs and also spotted the P on the PBS logo. Fun times.

More review and a great breakthrough

Today we went over the last letter learned again. She's still having trouble with it but I know she'll get it with more practice. Speaking of practice. It seems that our word reading practice is starting to pay off. She was able to sound out 'CAT' on her own today and then realize that she read the word 'CAT'. Her eyes lit up and I could see that she really thought it was cool. She read a few more words with a bit of difficulty but she was able to read 'PAT' just fine. Pat is also her uncle's name so she though that was especially cool!

New letter

I was able to add another letter today after reviewing what he had already learned. She had a difficult time remembering this one. She asked me several times to remind her what it was. It's kind of funny how she latches onto some but not others. She is really getting good at sounding out the old letters and is keeping the newer letters pretty close to her tongue as well. I'm very pleased with her progress.

More Starfall

Seems like I can't keep my kid off of Starfall.com . I've got no problem with that at all. I found a good deal on a kid sized mouse and keyboard. I've placed my order for that as well as a Leapfrog Word Whammer game. This toy is really cool as you can build three letter words and it sounds them out phonetically. Should be a nice supplement. It also uses the same letters as the other Leapfrog game.

I've introduced the next letter. I'm going to refrain from listing the letters in the order that they are listed in the book. I'm doing this only to keep from getting the author upset with someone releasing a step-by-step description of their method. I'll mention the letters learned and words read as we go along though. Nevertheless, she really likes this new letter and seems to know it quite well. She's locked in all the other letter sounds too so she seems to be doing quite well.

Starfall.com

I've been doing some searching for other phonics resources and stumbled across a really cool website geared towards kids. I found a fantastic site called Starfall.com . The site has lots of flash 'mini-games' based on each letter. I let my daughter click on the letters she already knows and play the little games associated with them. I only let her play a little while and of course she begged for more.

We did another review session and she's getting better with distinguishing between the two trouble letters. Words still are not making much sense.

Letter of the day

The letter of the day today is 'C'. My daughter was able to sound this one just fine. She was able to remember the sounds for 'U' and 'P' too, but when I showed her 'C' again she got it confused with 'U'. I can see how this can happen as they both look very similar in an arial style font. I didn't push her so hopefully we can overcome this.

A friend at work told me about the LeapFrog Fridge Phonics Magnetic Letter Set game that he had purchased for his daughter. He said that she knew almost all of the sounds for all the letters. I thought this might be cool so I bought it. I plan to give my daughter a letter magnet each time she learns a new one.

What's next

Today we started on 'P'. My little one enjoyed this session as well and was able to recall the 'U' sound. I showed her how to put together the sounds to make the word 'UP' but she didn't really see how they connected together. I'm sure this will come in time.

Time for a review

My daughter is CrAzY about playing school. She literally begs us to play. This is a good thing. I've read that you should always leave the student wanting more when you quit. This makes them want to do it again later without getting them tired on the whole thing.

My daugther is still having trouble figuring out 'C' from 'U'. I've decided not to move on to the next letter until she can do this well. I went over 'UP' again and introduced 'CUP'. She doesn't really get what's going on with the words. I'll just be patient and keep bringing these up.

Day 1

Today's the day. I printed out a large 'U' on a piece of printer paper and a few on some large index cards. I told my daughter that we were going to play school and that she should get her friends (stuff animals) together. We set up the learning mat (a throw blanket) and started our lesson. I followed the directions in the book and everything went EXACTLY as the book said it would. My daughter really enjoyed herself.

Throughout the day I would remind her about the 'U' sound and she would repeat it to me. Hopefully everyday will go as smoothly as this one.

First impressions

I've been reading the book for the past few days and found that the introductory chapter does a pretty good job at selling the system. I know that this is all part of the set up so hopefully it will be able to deliver what it promises.

Read it now?!

Amazon sent me an email stating that I can start reading my book online if I only pay a handful more dollars. While I am a very frugal person, I'd really like to get started so I plunked down the money and I now have access to the full book. Pretty cool. I'm going to start reading it during my lunch break today.

Teach Your Child to Read

I'm the proud father of a three-and-a-half year old little girl. She truly is the apple of her daddy's eye. She is very perceptive and has a very broad vocabulary. My wife and I do our best to introduce new ideas and words to her. She has quite the imagination as well.

I, like many of you, saw the infomercials about teaching babies to read. I purchased a book title How To Teach Your Baby To Read (The Gentle Revolution) by Glenn Doman. I attempted to work with my then one year old on learning sight words. The premise behind site reading is that through repetition the student would be able to learn any word shown to them. While this may be true, it also stands to reason that a child may learn the word 'CAT' but would have no idea what 'RAT' or 'BAT' would mean. It didn't take long to abandon this approach.

Fast forward two and half years to today. I did some research on phonics based programs and have decided to give Teach Your Child to Read in Just Ten Minutes a Day by Sidney Ledson a try. This book seems to fit what I think would be a better approach at teaching reading to my daughter. I've ordered the book and can't wait to get started.