Phonics with a four-year-old?

[melissel]

What would you do for phonics with a four-year-old? I was caught completely off-guard when DD6 taught herself to read just after her fourth birthday, and I've been concerned about her phonics skills ever since. I don't think that will happen with DD3, but I'd like to be prepared, just in case. If you did phonics with a little one, what did you like and find success with?

 

TIA!

[Guest]

We are going on our 2nd year with Spell to Write and Read. Here is a great article on how to implement it with preschoolers. (Ideas at bottom of article.) Even though SWR stresses spelling before reading, just learning the phonograms has enabled ds to be able to read CVC words. I'm liking it so far!

[NancyNellen]

We have had success with Phonics Pathways 4 times.

[K&Rs Mom]

Mine have both started Phonics Pathways at 4. You can do a page (or less) at a time, so 5 minute lessons, or as long as they're interested, and there are plenty of ideas for games. It's a good foundation and will last you a couple of years, and/or several children, all for one (rather expensive if new) book.

[TracyR]

Not sure , at that age I used 100 EZ lessons for my two oldest.

Now I use Headsprout. I guess it just depends on what you are looking for.

[Laurel]

We started OPGTR at 4. It worked really well for us, though for a while I wrote the words/sentences on a white board, as the pages were busy and the writing a bit too small for her.

[JenniferB]

From 3-4 I like to teach the phonics sounds using flash cards, and properly shaping letters using "2 on the clock" (SWR style). From 4-5 I do Ready, Set, Go for the Code (pre-Explode the Code series). Then, I just keep going through Explode the Code at his/her own pace.

[ElizabethB]

Talking letter factory DVD

 

Then Webster's Speller on a white board--the 2 letter blends are the perfect length to learn blending.

 

Some starfall and my concentration game for fun reinforcement, then move ahead in the speller. Both my children have been able to spell words before sounding them out, my 4 year old can still just spell. We will try a bit of the Speller with him this year, he already did the letter factory.

 

My daughter will help, she has wanted to help teach him to read since she was 5!

Edited July 27, 2009 by ElizabethB

[Aurelia]

Leapfrog's Talking Letter Factory (we also used Talking Word Factory). We followed that with ABeCeDarian level A, which also teaches handwriting.

[Shelly in the Country]

My two eldest children began phonics lessons around 4. Neither was writing really well with a pencil, so I held off on anything written for a few months. Formally we used 100 EZ Lessons until they were writing well. This went better with ds than dd. Dd didn't care for 100 EZ lessons. Informally, both played at starfall.com. I went through BOB books with both. Ds watched the Leapfrog Letter Factory DVDs. Once both were able to hold a pencil better (we did some Readywriter worksheets to assist in this), we dropped 100 EZ Lessons and went to VP Phonics Museum.

 

Also, before DS was able to write well, he loved playing with the letter puzzle pieces that came with VP Phonics Museum. He made words by connecting the letters. He also played with those foam bathtub letters to make words. He absolutely loved those. HTH

[Lisa in the UP of MI]

We start the pre-writing and pre-reading activities in Montessori Read and Write around 3.5yo, and move on to AAS when dc is building words confidently with a movable alphabet (so there is a fair bit of review in AAS). This worked very well for dd, and she became a reader at 4.5yo.

[Mama2Three]

PP here, too. We worked on the short vowel sounds for over a year with DS before he was ready to move on. DD picked them up much sooner, probably from hearing me say (short) a-e-i-o-u every day, lol! ETC has been a great fit, too, when DC were ready to write and broke up the monotony of PP.

[Guest Cindie2dds]

I would give WP's vertical phonics, with their language arts program, a try.

[Radish4ever]

Letter Factory taught my DD the sounds of the letters in less than a week (we did worksheets and actual lessons on the letters while she was 3, but the DVD made it all click and she memorized it all!) - and now we're on lesson 14 of OPGTR (for review - the first 26 lessons are the letter sounds). We're also doing the Get Ready, Get Set, and Go for the Code worksheets...mainly for confidence building and practice since she loves worksheets. Once we get to the meat of the OPGTR, we'll move on to book 1 in the ETC books to correspond to what she's learning in OPGTR :)

[petepie2]

We started OPGTR (the lessons teaching CVC words) when my DD was 3.5. I hadn't planned on starting that early. She already knew all of her letter sounds, but I wasn't sure if she had any phonetic awareness. Well, all of sudden she could tell me the starting letter of any word I gave her. So, I just started...now at age 5, we're on lesson 172 and she's reading at about a second grade level...

[Moni]

I start with a phonics book such as the short-A book from SSRW and MCP.

I teach the sounds (no letter names) only for the words in that book.

If the sentence is

Max the cat sat.

I make 3x5 index cards with the various word parts, a separate card each for

M

a

x

Ma

ax

Max

the

c

a

t

ca

at

s

sa

 

after a while you'll end up with a lot of duplicates and I just do a few of those and stop making them (at, a, for example)

I flash the cards. Student says the "sound" not the word

And say it short, k! not kuh , and not "see" for the "c" card.

 

When the student knows all the cards, I had them a book

Of course they read the book from cover to cover.

Then

I get the other short-A book (SSRW, MCP) and do the same thing

Cards mastery first.

 

I don't teach letter names.

I don't even teach all 26 sounds before they are up and reading.

I don't even tell the child we are going to "learn to read".

It's just "I flash, you say"

 

And so on and so forth with the short-E, short-I, short-U, short-O books, and so on to the long vowels, etc.

:seeya:

[Tidbits of Learning]

We start the pre-writing and pre-reading activities in Montessori Read and Write around 3.5yo, and move on to AAS when dc is building words confidently with a movable alphabet (so there is a fair bit of review in AAS). This worked very well for dd, and she became a reader at 4.5yo.

 

Did you get this in the States? I have been searching and can only find it on overseas sites or used. I would love to start it soon. We have been working on sandpaper letters and know our letter sounds. We are ready for the moveable alphabet but I need some guidance.

[japhmi]

OPGTR is what we used with our daughter. Like someone else noted, it can be hard (especially at first) for the kid to actually look at the book. DW typed out the sentences/words/etc on the computer in our case to help DD focus.

[Lisa in the UP of MI]

Did you get this in the States? I have been searching and can only find it on overseas sites or used. I would love to start it soon. We have been working on sandpaper letters and know our letter sounds. We are ready for the moveable alphabet but I need some guidance.

 

I bought Montessori Read and Write new on Amazon 2 years ago, but I see it is only available used or quite expensive new through a third party.

[vkay]

and we love it! Currently my youngest started it when she was 3. My favorite thing to do once they get comfortable with 3 letter words is to add in Hooked on Phonics. I find this combination to work well together.

[kmacnchs]

We started OPGTR at 4. It worked really well for us, though for a while I wrote the words/sentences on a white board, as the pages were busy and the writing a bit too small for her.

 

We started OPG at 2 and I used the magnadoodle b/c of the small writing & busy pages.

[Lovedtodeath]

 

If you did phonics with a little one, what did you like and find success with?

We used the Accelerated-Achievement demo disk. It was $3 and is set up similar to MFW K, (is mostly games) but goes much farther than C-V-C words. DD was reading about 3rd grade level by the time she turned 5.

[Satori]

My 4 year old daughter watched Leapfrog Letter Factory and was reading and spelling CVC words after watching just once. I had a few phonics reading books but neither 100EZ nor PP were my style nor my DD's. Eventually I picked up OPG and now we're on Lesson 46. That is working out extremely well for us.

 

I also use a small whiteboard. A big side benefit is that she always wants to try writing a few sentences and is starting to learn to write her lowercase. I now see similar sentences and paragraphs lying around the house on random papers, lol!

[JudoMom]

We have had success with Phonics Pathways 4 times.

 

:iagree:

[Terabith]

My daughter turned four at the end of April. She has been able to identify all her letters (upper and lowercase) and all their sounds since she was 18 months old. She has been telling us the sounds words begin and end with, doing rhyming, and oral blending of sounds for a looong time. She's very smart; school system gave her an iq test when we were suspecting an autism spectrum disorder at 2 because she was saying, "Mommy, I don't really care for other children." She definitely doesn't, and as other kids have become more verbal, she is more fond of them. Anyway, she was well into the highly gifted range, for all the accuracy they have at three.....

 

I thought teaching her to read would be easy. I thought she was very ready.

 

I was wrong. She knows the sounds. We tried Reading Lesson and Webster's on the white board and Reading Eggs. All ended in blank looks and tearful frustration.

 

I'm planning on waiting till she's a solid 4.5 and then try again. I MAY do Winter Promise's Basic Phonics. I periodically review the sounds to make sure she hasn't forgotten them, but she just really doesn't seem ready to read. Even sight words just totally blank looks.

 

So....there are a lot of good ways to teach a child to read. But they might not be ready at four. Or they might. But don't worry, either way.

[siloam]

I honestly wouldn't worry about it. If they suddenly start reading then I would buy a phonics based spelling program, like All About Spelling, and start it immediately.

 

If you really feel the need to do something then I would make sand letter cards, and have her tract them while saying their sounds. In addition I would play I spy, but use the beginning sound of the word. "I spy something that starts with the /f/ sound....."

 

Heather