Reading program for advanced not quite 4 year old?

[Annie Laurie]

My youngest will be four in two months. He completed the three ETC primers in a period of about two months, working at his own pace, and mostly doing it on his own while I worked with his siblings. He was taking it one step further, doing things like writing "Moon" under the picture of the moon, instead of just the letter M. He has known his letter sounds for a long time. He can read cvc words: I write them down, and the ones he doesn't know, I can see his lips move as he sounds them out. He wants to know how to read, he says he only knows how to read "little words" with a sad face.

 

The problem is, he is a big time perfectionist. He'll get upset when his letters don't look perfect or his drawing of a duck doesn't look realistic enough. Because of that, and the fact that all of my kids have learned to read pretty painlessly mostly on their own,(from being surrounded by a literature rich environment, etc), I was just going to let him keep tagging along with his own workbooks and not worry about it for now. Also, I tend to be on the relaxed side with little kids, and it feels weird to me to get into anything to formal with a little one. I'm afraid of burning him out and ruining the love of learning he currently has. Dh thinks ds is going to get bored as he gets older because I don't challenge him enough. He thinks I should get some kind of reading program and just back off if ds gets frusturated, follow ds' pace, but he thinks ds will eat it up.

 

Any thoughts on early reading instruction?

 

And that leads me to... What reading program? Most things I've looked at for PreK or K involve letters and sounds and things he already knows. I think he needs to start with more blending practice- what could I use to start there? Ds has very advanced fine motor skills and likes workbooks. I was thinking of just starting ETC 1 and slowly going through those and the BOB books we already have- would that be enough? I was also looking at Horizons K phonics & reading because it looked like it gets into more advanced phonics fairly quickly. I have 100 EZ and don't love it but tried it with him since I already had it. Ds felt that wasn't learning how to read since it involved no writing :001_huh:, so it has to have some writing.

 

Thanks!

[pixelroper]

StWR? This has an initial learning curve for the parent but does include writing & spelling as dc are learning to read. I used OPGTR, which I believe is similar to 100 EZ. Not sure though. I now use StWR now b/c I like how the mechanics of spelling is presented.

[JeanM]

I used "Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons" with both of my boys. It is great for blending and the lessons are pretty short and they thought the stories were funny. It starts out pretty slow, you can go pretty quickly through the beginning parts if your dc already knows that stuff. I skipped all the writing for my dc, but they had "issues" with writing. It is cheap too.:001_smile:

 

My younger ds likes ETC too, but I don't think it is as good at teaching your child to blend sounds.

 

Jean

[Old Dominion Heather]

I am in love with OPGTR. My guys love it. My just turned six-year-old finished it up day before yesterday. He is reading at least on a fourth or fifth grade level.

 

I love that it involved absolutely no writing. I love that the practices are sentences that my boys thought were interesting. I love that it just looks like a book, no pictures.

[Lisa in the UP of MI]

I'm about to start OPGTR with my 3 1/2-year-old, along with Bob books. DD isn't writing yet and workbooks are not her thing so I think this will work well for her. If your ds likes ETC why don't you just keep going? You could use the workbooks on their own or alongside another program.

[LisaKinVA]

We've used Abeka Letters & Sounds for 3 of ours... my youngest (4) is finishing the K version now. It does involve blending, marking vowels (short/long/silent), underlining blends, etc. The 1st grade one gets into special sounds.

 

But, if your DS likes ETC, I think I would start there with the 1st grade books and slow down when ds gets frustrated (I believe at least one person suggested that before me).

[StephanieZ]

your son could probably learn quite well with just ETC and some time with good phonics based readers. I've used ETC and 100EZL together, but it sounds to me like you've got one of those could-just-teach-himself kids, so you may get off really easy.

 

If 100EZL doesn't appeal, I'd continue on with ETC1 and add in Bob books, early Dr. Seuss books and then soon enough Pathway Readers. (We start the Pathway Readers when we wrap up 100EZL, so I'm not sure at what point it would add in best w/o 100EZL in the mix. . .)

 

Since you ds likes to write but is perfectionist, perhaps now is a good time to split the sujects of "handwriting" and "reading". Get him a nice little handwriting book (we use the ZB series, and you can print out ZB pages on enchanted learning for this really early level as well. My now 5yo dd loves handwriting so much, so she's used the K book, the 1 book and is now on 2M (which I'd never bothered to use with my older dc. . .) In fact, I may be remembering wrong but I am pretty sure I had an extra 1st grade handwriting book that I'd bought by mistake and so I had her do that one twice. :) She really really wanted to learn to form those letters at age 4 to early 5. Once she had really mastered them by about 5 yo, she became less fanatical about it.

 

Explain that he has graduated to now having these two subjects! Woohoo! Big cake!! :) That may allow him to progress faster in reading, as otherwise the writing will hold him back.

 

Also, my dc have used alphabet stamps for ETC1 (which requires a lot more writing than the pre-1 series). My dc were also 4 when doing ETC1 and that helped get them over the hump, especially with my ds who was a more reluctant writer.

 

FWIW, my 5 yo is now working fine through ETC2, so it surely can be done. She used some letter stamps at the beginning of ETC1 but then didn't mind the writing (unlike my ds who really tired quickly of writing at that age)

[Annie Laurie]

your son could probably learn quite well with just ETC and some time with good phonics based readers. I've used ETC and 100EZL together, but it sounds to me like you've got one of those could-just-teach-himself kids, so you may get off really easy.

 

If 100EZL doesn't appeal, I'd continue on with ETC1 and add in Bob books, early Dr. Seuss books and then soon enough Pathway Readers. (We start the Pathway Readers when we wrap up 100EZL, so I'm not sure at what point it would add in best w/o 100EZL in the mix. . .)

 

Since you ds likes to write but is perfectionist, perhaps now is a good time to split the sujects of "handwriting" and "reading". Get him a nice little handwriting book (we use the ZB series, and you can print out ZB pages on enchanted learning for this really early level as well. My now 5yo dd loves handwriting so much, so she's used the K book, the 1 book and is now on 2M (which I'd never bothered to use with my older dc. . .) In fact, I may be remembering wrong but I am pretty sure I had an extra 1st grade handwriting book that I'd bought by mistake and so I had her do that one twice. :) She really really wanted to learn to form those letters at age 4 to early 5. Once she had really mastered them by about 5 yo, she became less fanatical about it.

 

Explain that he has graduated to now having these two subjects! Woohoo! Big cake!! :) That may allow him to progress faster in reading, as otherwise the writing will hold him back.

 

Also, my dc have used alphabet stamps for ETC1 (which requires a lot more writing than the pre-1 series). My dc were also 4 when doing ETC1 and that helped get them over the hump, especially with my ds who was a more reluctant writer.

 

FWIW, my 5 yo is now working fine through ETC2, so it surely can be done. She used some letter stamps at the beginning of ETC1 but then didn't mind the writing (unlike my ds who really tired quickly of writing at that age)

 

Great ideas!

 

Thanks everyone. :001_smile:

[mooooom]

My kids hated 100EZ Lessons, but did great with Reading Reflex. You can move through it pretty quickly if he is ready.

[WTMindy]

We didn't use a curriculum. We sat down with a magnadoodle (one of those boards you write on and erase) and practiced blending short words. We also used real books and I would read the harder words and they would sound out the easier ones. Both the kids read well at 3.

[AnneD]

gets a big thumbs up! We didn't go all the way through to the end before transitioning to tandem reading things like Amelia,Bedelia, Henry & Mudge, Mr. Putter & Tabby, etc.

[Julesnpebbles@suddenlink.]

I absolutely love Teach Your Child to Read Well by Michael Maloney. It is not very well known but I discovered it when my son turned 4 and was reading at a 2nd grade level. I went at my son's pace and started in level 1b - which is K-2nd. It is excellent. It is phonics-based but not traditional. Please look into this all of you who have excellent early readers. I've tried so many things and found it a waste of time and money.

 

I also have a daughter who has had problems learning how to read. She's 7.5 and I'm suspecting a LD (? perhaps). I've tried so many things but now she is reading at her level since I started this program with her. You can only get it in Canada - but they ship it to the states on their website. It's a bit costly but I love it. Worth Every penny!!!

 

you can email or message me if you have more specific questions.

[cin]

I had an early reader, and actually have a 2nd early reader. (both at about 3.4 yrs). We did 100 ez and then went into Rod and Staff Reading/phonics. I did the first two years of phonics with my oldest. It covers most everything, and I did alot of the writing for her in the beginning. I really liked the phonics with R&S.

[mrsdrcook]

We had similar issues with my dd4.75 who knew all letters and sound by 40mo. OPG was too fast moving and distracting with the parent script alongside the child script. She had/has the capacity for learning rapidly but not the attention skills for staying focused. So we switched to "The Reading Lesson" which I found to be more preschooler friendly - less distracting and a better pace. We will finish the book by May so the current delima here is what to do for K5! The Bob books were very good for developing confidence. I had to hide them eventually though because she wanted to keep on reading them when I wanted her to move on to more challenging books. (We only used sets 1 and 2.)

[sarahberry]

Hi,

 

My ds also knew all the sounds and letters at two, could count to fifty and more, knew all the colors, shapes (even stuff like hexagon, octogon, decagon, etc..), had a super large vocabulary, and was reading words by sight. However, he refused to have anythign to do with phonics until he was four and I didn't have time to do glenn doman's sight reading program because the prep work was tow much for me...it is however simple enough to implement if you have the time and energy. I didn't because I was pregnant with twins and after they were born I definitely didn't have time for it. Anyway, At four ds decided to start blending and within a few months he was reading at a fifth grade level. It is hard to say how much he could read before that but he has a phenom memory and he used to read from memory tons of books and recite poetry I read to him. LOL I still reember him being two and reciting Shakespeare soliloquy's I had recited to him...it was really adorable! Oh! I miss those days! I als miss how adorable he was when he would knock down his block buidlings and happily declare that "he had demolished his structure" LOL. Now that he is four he is very sophisticated and quite a little man...what happened to the cute little toddler? :P

 

We started him on Calvert K at three and a half and he whizzed through it and then we taught reading with phonics by reading everyday. He used BOB books, Houghton Mifflin first grade readers and phonics library, Scott Foresmen first grade readers, McGraw Hill first grade readers and level appropriate picture books in between. I am not a fan of textbooks but why I chose to use the leveled anthologies was because the reading is leveld and progressive in a way that I think is good for beginners. After we did this (it took really from october to december) he was reading at a mid-second grade level. Then from December to now he has progressed to about a fifth grade reading level and reads just about anything and everything. We don't focus our reading around textbook anthologies anymore but they really were great for beginning readers.

[Tess in the Burbs]

my daughter did the ETC primers at 3 and then started ETC 1 and 100EL right at her 4th birthday. She's in ETC 3 now, reading very well, done with 100EL and will start going through OPGTTR to cement the phonics next week. It worked well for her.