Is This Common With Preschoolers?

[sweetbaby]

My youngest dd, 3, has been learning her letters but she recalls the sounds instead of the names of the letters. She has been trying to blend these and play read using her little books. I think she can recall the names perhaps if I really pushed it but we learn mostly through fun educational play or loosely schooling. After four sons learning the "common" way, I just thought this was...well..different. ;)

[Miss Sherry]

That sounds great to me. Lot's of children do not learn their letter sounds or names until they are several years older than your 3 year old. It is not necessary to learn the names of the letters before learning the sounds. It is the sounds that we use to read with. The names of the letters come in handy for other reasons, such as spelling, but they are not necessary to learn to read. She has plenty of time to learn the names.

[Guest RecumbentHeart]

That sounds great to me. Lot's of children do not learn their letter sounds or names until they are several years older than your 3 year old. It is not necessary to learn the names of the letters before learning the sounds. It is the sounds that we use to read with. The names of the letters come in handy for other reasons, such as spelling, but they are not necessary to learn to read. She has plenty of time to learn the names.

 

:iagree:My son learned the sounds first and then I worked with him on learning the names because "that's what you do" (so to speak) but all it did was delay his reading because he got confused between the two and I had to keep working with him even more to separate the two pieces of information in his mind before he could get back to blending.

 

I imagine it's different for every child though but if I was able to do it again with my son I would have foregone the letter names and just made sure he was solid on the sounds and moved straight into blending. He would have been ahead of where he is with reading now and probably could have learned the letter names at this stage of mental maturity a lot quicker. Basically for him it would have been a better use of time to simply skip that info until later.

[stripe]

Learning the letter name is actually not particularly useful, so I'd avoid it completely for as long as possible. Better to have her reading "cat" from blending the sounds than just spelling everything.

 

Besides, then you can say to your older kids, "Get the c-o-o-k-i-e-s out of the frig and we'll eat them after she's gone to b-e-d." ;)

[rockermom]

My youngest dd, 3, has been learning her letters but she recalls the sounds instead of the names of the letters. She has been trying to blend these and play read using her little books. I think she can recall the names perhaps if I really pushed it but we learn mostly through fun educational play or loosely schooling. After four sons learning the "common" way, I just thought this was...well..different. ;)

 

That's exactly how I wanted my ds to learn, but many outside (and inside) factors led to both at the same time. The sound is needed for reading, so don't sweat it. It sounds like she's doing great!

[rockermom]

Learning the letter name is actually not particularly useful, so I'd avoid it completely for as long as possible. Better to have her reading "cat" from blending the sounds than just spelling everything.

 

Besides, then you can say to your older kids, "Get the c-o-o-k-i-e-s out of the frig and we'll eat them after she's gone to b-e-d." ;)

 

:lol: ... and that

[1GirlTwinBoys]

My twin boy's did that a lot at 2 & 3 years old. They would bring me a letter from a puzzle or the fridge and say the sound instead of the letter. They are in K now and actually reading on a 3rd grade level. At 4 is when they started learning the actual letter names. :)

[kalanamak]

My youngest dd, 3, has been learning her letters but she recalls the sounds instead of the names of the letters. She has been trying to blend these and play read using her little books. I think she can recall the names perhaps if I really pushed it but we learn mostly through fun educational play or loosely schooling. After four sons learning the "common" way, I just thought this was...well..different. ;)

 

It is not common. I taught my son that way, and when he met with a woman who dealt with kids and vision for 30 years, she was amazed.

[lionfamily1999]

My youngest says B is /b/, but it's name is "B."

 

If you're worried about the alphabet, sing it :p, if you have flashcards, pick them up or point to them when you sing it.

 

In OPGtTR, they recommend using Old MacDonald had a Farm, but saying A E I O U instead of E I E I O. Luke and I sing it and use all the letters, instead of just the vowels (and on this farm he had an A, A E I O U, with an /a/ /a/ here...).

 

The sounds are more important to beginner reading anyway. :)

[*Jessica*]

Learning the letter name is actually not particularly useful, so I'd avoid it completely for as long as possible. Better to have her reading "cat" from blending the sounds than just spelling everything.

 

Besides, then you can say to your older kids, "Get the c-o-o-k-i-e-s out of the frig and we'll eat them after she's gone to b-e-d." ;)

:lol: Oh, how I miss the days of being able to spell things I didn't want little ears to understand!

[Dinsfamily]

Learning the letter name is actually not particularly useful, so I'd avoid it completely for as long as possible. Better to have her reading "cat" from blending the sounds than just spelling everything.

 

Besides, then you can say to your older kids, "Get the c-o-o-k-i-e-s out of the frig and we'll eat them after she's gone to b-e-d." ;)

:lol:

 

I agree with everyone else that the sounds are important and letter names aren't. I even discourage my 5yo from using letter names during spelling because letter names can be confusing. Instead, we use the phonogram sounds to spell out words.

 

She'll probably pick up her letters names given time anyway from TV or siblings eventually.

[abbeyej]

That's how my oldest learned. He was reading well (2nd/3rd grade level) at age 3, but didn't consistently know all of the names of the letters till much later on. And I remember re-teaching him the alphabet several years after that, when he started looking things up in the dictionary. :)

 

My dd, on the other hand, went to a very part-time preschool where they (stupidly, in my mind) focused more on letter names and capitals (rather than lower cases, which are what we actually read), and it seemed to confuse her a lot.

[JaniceO]

My 4 year old learned the sounds first (although she's no where near reading). She watched "The Letter Factory" and picked the sounds up from there. It was cute, she used to spell her name /a/ /b/ /b/ /y/. Now she spells it with the letters and it's still cute.

 

I have to laugh about the spelling things you don't want your kids to hear. My kids are 6th, 4th, and 2nd and have been able to spell for a LONG time, but the other day we had a meeting at the school concerning my youngest son's speech. The guy was leading us back to the room and told me he had 2 c-o-m-p-u-t-e-r-s if the boys want to use them. I'm pretty sure I looked like this :confused: and then :001_huh: before I explained that my boys were capable of spelling.

[Dinsfamily]

That's how my oldest learned. He was reading well (2nd/3rd grade level) at age 3, but didn't consistently know all of the names of the letters till much later on. And I remember re-teaching him the alphabet several years after that, when he started looking things up in the dictionary. :)

 

My dd, on the other hand, went to a very part-time preschool where they (stupidly, in my mind) focused more on letter names and capitals (rather than lower cases, which are what we actually read), and it seemed to confuse her a lot.

 

I don't mind focusing on letter names as long as sounds go with it, but it drives me crazy how so many programs focus on capital letters! I was glad that our preschool focused on teaching the kids to write lowercase. I'm hoping that it wasn't teacher-dependent since I'll be sending my 3yo there next year and his teacher doesn't work there anymore.

[MissKNG]

I don't mind focusing on letter names as long as sounds go with it, but it drives me crazy how so many programs focus on capital letters! I was glad that our preschool focused on teaching the kids to write lowercase. I'm hoping that it wasn't teacher-dependent since I'll be sending my 3yo there next year and his teacher doesn't work there anymore.

 

I have to admit I was "one of those"!! I reviewed letter sounds with capital letters - I didn't know any better. Luckily, dd taught herself the lower case somewhere along the line. She learned opposite of the original poster (letter first then sound) and she is doing fine with reading IMO.

 

readingeggs.com teaches sound before letter too.

Edited October 26, 2009 by MissKNG

[sweetbaby]

Wow! Your responses are so encouraging. I guess we are on the right track. I didn't homeschool my sons at preschool/K level so this information is extremely helpful. Thanks so much for the wonderful tips!

[Oak Knoll Mom]

That sounds great to me. Lot's of children do not learn their letter sounds or names until they are several years older than your 3 year old. It is not necessary to learn the names of the letters before learning the sounds. It is the sounds that we use to read with. The names of the letters come in handy for other reasons, such as spelling, but they are not necessary to learn to read. She has plenty of time to learn the names.

:iagree::iagree::iagree:

[kmacnchs]

My youngest dd, 3, has been learning her letters but she recalls the sounds instead of the names of the letters. She has been trying to blend these and play read using her little books. I think she can recall the names perhaps if I really pushed it but we learn mostly through fun educational play or loosely schooling. After four sons learning the "common" way, I just thought this was...well..different. ;)

 

We are in the same boat! I thought it was so weird and funny. So, now we are working on learning our letters w/dd2. We use starfall - if she can point to a letter and tell me what it is, we will watch it (incentive). This is after I established that if I put some letters in front of her, she could pick out the correct one...now we are just trying to get her to verbalize the letter name :)

[Dinsfamily]

I have to admit I was "one of those"!! I reviewed letter sounds with capital letters - I didn't know any better. Luckily, dd taught herself the lower case somewhere along the line. She learned opposite of the original poster (letter first then sound) and she is doing fine with reading IMO.

 

readingeggs.com teaches sound before letter too.

 

My boys learned letters then the sounds (not really by teaching, they just learned from puzzles and leapfrog magnets) and don't have any problems reading. I just don't think that learning letter names is important for a young child. The problem I ran into with my oldest who was exposed to more capitals (I didn't know, either) is that he really wanted to write with capitals at first. I had to break the capital habit and, thankfully, his preschool reinforced lowercase letters. I've been more diligent in teaching my 3yo lowercase first.

 

I'm now seeing with a friend's 6yo son that he mostly writes in capital letters. Often, he'll mix capital and lowercase letters in words. He has no problem reading lowercase, but doesn't want to use it for writing. I will say that his Kindergarten teacher also writes the kids' names in all capitals on their papers which doesn't help.

[FairProspects]

Well, there are some very good arguments for teaching capitals first. For one, kids with fine motor delays can write capitals more easily because they are mostly straight lines and there are less curves. To a kid with fine motor problems, this can mean the difference between writing and not writing at all.

 

Also, it virtually eliminates B/D, P/Q confusion. Ds can read both upper and lower case and has never had a problem distinguishing between the two, but because of his fine motor issues, I have learned why it might be the best choice to do capitals first while other skills mature.