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Help me have realistic expectations for my 4yo reading!


Megicce
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Hi there! Ok, so I know that this is a question that has no right answer, because everyone's philosophy on reading is different and everyone's child is different. But I find myself freaking out over how not-far we are in OPGTR and how not proficient in reading dd is after half a year of K4, and I need someone to talk me down off the "I suck at this" ledge! :)

 

My dd is nearly 5 and we've been doing K4 this year. We are just getting into the "beginning consonant blends" section of OPGTR. Dd usually does really well as long as we're going slow and she can sound out slowly, but she's still needing to sound out - only rarely looking at words and being able to read them without having to go "ffffffff...iiiiiiiiii....xxxxx. Fix!" Things she's seen often, like "cat" and "mom" and stuff like that, she can read without sounding out. Sight words like "the" too. I have tried to work with her on stringing all the sounds together without a space in between, but she still breaks them up. (I feel like I'm nagging if I keep pressing the issue.) I worry that i's starting to become a problem now that we're getting into longer words, because once in a while she will mentally reverse sounds or leave off the first sound. (i.e. "hhhhh...oooo....pppp. Op!") Sometimes she just guesses. Sometimes she accidentally starts with the letter on the right, then can't let it go and start from the left. (Like for "pat" - "ttttttt...." "Where do we start?" "ppppp...aaaaa...tttt. Tap!")

 

I haven't had material for her to read that's exactly scintillating - we've mostly just been reading the practice sentences and short stories in OPGTR, and she finds them boring. (She actually groans most of the time when I bring out the book. Not a good sign.) I just ordered a couple of the reading books from AAR, so I'm hoping that will inject some fun and motivation into our tooth-pulling reading lessons.

 

I guess my question and my worry is - are we doing ok? Are these just normal struggles? Are we at a "normal" place? I was an early, easy reader, and incremental progress is a hard concept to wrap my head around. I'm trying to get more comfortable with it, but then I worry that I'm getting too comfortable, KWIM?

 

TY!

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You are doing just fine, really. Many, many, many four year olds are not reading and are not really ready to read. Keep working at blending. You cannot force reading like you cannot force walking. Read to her a lot but relax. My kids all read at different times. My ds who couldn't remember his letter names in K is now reading the Harry Potter series mid-second grade. My dd who knew all her sounds at 3 also didn't "take off" in reading until second grade no matter what I did. She started that year reading Frog and Toad and ended it reading Harry Potter. (My other ds followed a different path that doesn't apply here.)

 

The more you stress, the more she will learn reading is a stressful endeavor. Keep teaching her in small, fun lessons, using "a light touch" and she will get it.

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My 4 year old DS is the exact same and my now 6 year old DD went through the same thing when I started with her at 5. Some kids don't go through that phase but many do. I don't know why it eventually clicked for dd despite the large effort and many steps back but it did and now she is reading well. DS is going even slower than her but he is over a year younger so that makes sense. He pauses between his sounds instead of blending without pauses too. I wasn't an early reader because I wasn't given any instruction at all until school but I picked it up with no effort so this is all new to me and I didn't know what it should look like.

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I think you'll find the AAR readers a delight for both of you to read! My son never liked the OPGTR reading. In fact, I don't make him read them. I read them slowly, modeling sounding out the words cause he still puts the spaces between every letter he sounds out lol. "Ssss. Ttttt. Aaaaa. Mmmm. Ppppp. Stamp!" And he's nearly six lol! So I read the list of words, then we read them together, then he reads them on his own. Then I read the little story at the end.

 

The part of reading he actually likes are the AAR readers! We've only done the first volume, we've read and reread and really enojoyed the stories! For K, I had a goal of getting to section 7 - the long vowels. We have one more lesson in section 6 - tomorrow's lesson. For the rest of the year, we're going to just read AAR readers and play a ton of sight word games. I think he just needs more time to grow and practice and ruminate.

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My middle son was in that stage for 2 full years. It is very painful. We are just now coming out of it toward the end of his K year. DO NOT WORRY. :)

 

One thing that helped him get out of the sounding out phase happened to be switching to the method that Phonics Pathways uses, where you work on 2-letter blends, then 3-letter blends, etc. So they start out doing things like:

 

s a s-a sa

 

Then when they get proficient at blending two letters, you move on to three letters:

 

sa sa-t sat

 

We started Phonics Pathways with both of my younger kids - one was just over 3.5 and the other was just over 6. Both could blend and sound out words already, but both were still sounding everything out (completely expected of the 3 year old, of course). Now the 6 year old is way ahead of the 3 year old in PP, because with the 3 year old I have been mostly reviewing the "easy" pages that don't have a big list of words on them (he gets overwhelmed by the lists - again, expected for the age). Anyway, a few weeks ago, BOTH kids started automatically blending without sounding out each individual phonogram!!!! Both of them! I couldn't believe it! So apparently, this method clicked with them. Even the 3 year old now reads both of the above examples straight across *very* quickly. And the 6 year old is doing 4 letter words like "bend", where they have "be ben ben-d bend", and he'll say: /be/... /bend/, skipping to the last word. He is understanding it so much quicker.

 

Don Potter has a free Blend Phonics course that is very similar. I don't know how far it goes. Phonics Pathways goes to about 4th or 5th grade, I think? PP is very similar to OPGTR in scope.

 

But really, when your child isn't even 5 yet, I wouldn't fret one little bit about still sounding stuff out. It's good that she can blend already!!!

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I know it's really hard not to, but don't worry. She is doing just fine! She is light years ahead of where my oldest was at only 4. He was SO not interested. I couldn't even get him to learn to recognize all the letters and certainly could not teach him to read. He is 7.5 and finally reading with some fluency. My now 5 year old twins are both just starting out also. My daughter is ahead of my son, but definitely not reading fluently. I have no doubt she will be reading earlier than my oldest was (and before her twin brother since she is already ahead of him), but I'm not worried about them not doing it yet.

 

Hang in there. She is only 4. It will click at some point.

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I would say she is ahead of the game !!

 

I have started all of my children on reading at 4. They have started reading fluently at different ages, from 4 to 10. It isn't something you can rush. Just keep at it, without frustrating her and it will likely be a light bulb moment that just clicks on. When we hit a wall in OPGTR, we just took time to practice what they already knew for a week or two, or more. Then went back to OPGTR ( 100 Easy Lessons years ago. ) That 10 year old that was still sounding out words, read Moby Dick as his first solo book. ;-) I would not even remotely begin to get worried unless a child was 8, and not reading reasonably well.

 

180 days in the average school year X 12 years for 1st through 12th grade = 2160 / 365 days in a year = 5.9 years to fully educate the average child. Breath, just breath !

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I don't know if it's normal, but it sure seems to be so based on other comments. We're going through the same thing. I took a break from Ordinary Parent's Guide last October 31st. We got through the first 26 lessons like a breeze. As soon as the reading started, though, it was arrested development. I went over the first 5 lessons in Section 3 (short-vowel words), repeated over and over, over the course of 2 whole months, and my daughter wasn't making any progress. So I stopped, and I haven't picked it up.

 

I often quiz her on letter sounds in the hopes that she doesn't forget those, but reading on her own hasn't happened yet. For now, I read to her from any book she likes and throw in BOB books from Set 1, too. She can read some of the words in the BOB books, but not all.

 

I plan to resume Ordinary Parent's Guide in May (after her birthday/when her new school year starts).

 

Good luck! You're doing good work. :hurray:

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Can your 4 year old write/form all of the letters well? I like to focus on writing first before reading. So I would have a 4 year old in HWT pre K or ETC GetReadySetGo practicing forming those letters. Usually (not always--but usually) by 4 they know all the letter sounds these days so I found the first section of OPGTR useless. I also have them write as they read. So using something like ETC as well as a book like OPGTR may help. Instead of just reading cat, they would read it as they write it. Either by tracing, or copywork, or writing the sound they hear. Sound out as they write. Knocks spelling out too. You may want to get Writing Road to Reading from the library if just to read. I read it when my oldest was learning and liked the ide abut never followed up with it since he was a natural reader and speller. I'm thinking about using it instead of OPG.

 

I have had to take all of those OPGTR lessons out of the book. My ds hates the sight of the thing. So I make word family cards from paint samples to read, or i write all of the sentences fro him to read or copy. Or I staple paper together to make little booklets with the story in and let him illustrate them as he reads.

 

The format of that book is really awful imho.

 

At that age lots of work with letter tiles (either magnet or otherwise), the HWT wooden letter pieces, sandpaper letters, forming letters and words in sensory material and practicing handwriting in conjunction with phonics is a better method than sitting with that book.

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