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[Chris in VA]

I've heard of several methods that use this approach. I chose differently, but glad it worked for you and your kiddos. :001_smile:

[Melissa B]

My cousin is a 1st grade teacher and she teaches all of her classes to sing the ABCs that way - both forward and backward. My son taught himself that way as well - probably from watching the Leap Frog ABC DVD since they end the song lines with the letter sound and not the name causing him to remember the sounds better than the letter names. :001_smile: He still calls some of the letters by their sounds instead of their names.

[8filltheheart]

I'm tired of people IRL asking me how I taught my dc to read and then look at me like I have 3 heads when I tell them.

I never taught my dc the names of the letters in the alphabet until after they were blending cvc words. I taught them to call the letters by their phonetic sounds. Instead of singing the A-B-C song, we sang the /a/ - /b/ - /c/ song.

 

 

When they looked at a word, they weren't saying C-A-T spells cat, they were sounding /c/ /a/ /t/ says cat. Or H-O-P spells hop, but /h/ /o/ /p/ says hop.

My older dc were both blending cvc words by 3 and reading beginner chapter books by 4, and my ds2 recognizes most of the sounds now. So, I know this worked, or maybe my children just learned to read in spite of me.

 

 

Anyone else do something similar, or am I just way out there all by myself?

 

I've taught 6 of my children to read and not one of them learned the names of the letters before their phonetic sound.

 

Now I don't teach them to sound out c-a-t b/c I teach them the blended sound of consonants and vowels via the Ferris Wheel song in SSRW (ba, be, bi, bo, bu, ca, (ke, ki), co, cu, etc) so they would sound out cat as ca-t.

 

FWIW, SSRW teaches phonetic sounds not letter names. My kids have all just learned letter names w/o any instruction or problems.

[Violet Crown]

Yes, we do that: avoid "letter names" as long as possible. It makes reading Chicka Chicka Boom Boom less euphonious, doesn't it? :)

 

We also teach only the lower-case letters. Somehow, capitals, letter names, and the order of the alphabet are absorbed by osmosis from their surrounding.

[2cents]

I'm tired of people IRL asking me how I taught my dc to read and then look at me like I have 3 heads when I tell them.

I never taught my dc the names of the letters in the alphabet until after they were blending cvc words. I taught them to call the letters by their phonetic sounds. Instead of singing the A-B-C song, we sang the /a/ - /b/ - /c/ song.

 

 

When they looked at a word, they weren't saying C-A-T spells cat, they were sounding /c/ /a/ /t/ says cat. Or H-O-P spells hop, but /h/ /o/ /p/ says hop.

My older dc were both blending cvc words by 3 and reading beginner chapter books by 4, and my ds2 recognizes most of the sounds now. So, I know this worked, or maybe my children just learned to read in spite of me.

 

 

Anyone else do something similar, or am I just way out there all by myself?

 

That is how I taught mine to read. Both girls used 100 Easy Lessons and were reading by 3. This is why I like 100 Easy Lessons. It just made more sense to me to learn the sounds along with the letter names. They immediately learned blending too. More efficient!

[Mallory]

I used to teach at a private school and that is how they teach- no letter names until sounds are already learned.

 

So that is what I do with my kids.

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[Guest RecumbentHeart]

Yes, we do that: avoid "letter names" as long as possible. It makes reading Chicka Chicka Boom Boom less euphonious, doesn't it? :)

 

We also teach only the lower-case letters. Somehow, capitals, letter names, and the order of the alphabet are absorbed by osmosis from their surrounding.

 

 

Same experience here. I have also not been able to avoid them learning to sing the ABCs. Even my 2yo knows that song.

 

But yeah, as for direct teaching it's lower case and sounds first here. I haven't had anyone look at me funny over it though. It's made sense to anyone I've explained it to.

[Stratford]

I haven't tried this, per se, but it makes a lot of sense to me. My DS#2 (just turned 4) learned his letter sounds before the name of the letter. After watching "the frog" a few times, he would look at the letter M, for example, and say "oh, that's MMMMM." I thought it was a little weird, until I realized he could sound out words very easily. I only wish I'd taught him lower case letters first. Oh, well. We'll try that for #3. ;)

[grace'smom]

That is what SWR recommends as well.

[RootAnn]

Same experience here. I have also not been able to avoid them learning to sing the ABCs. But yeah, as for direct teaching it's lower case and sounds first here.

 

:iagree: We use 100EL & SWR.

 

My older dc were both blending cvc words by 3 and reading beginner chapter books by 4, and my ds2 recognizes most of the sounds now. So, I know this worked, or maybe my children just learned to read in spite of me.

 

I will say, however, that this doesn't necessarily lead to the results shown above (reading early). So far, the earliest mine have taken off in reading is 7 and I am still waiting for that "jump" (to chapter books) in my current almost 8-yr-old.

[paceofnature]

My kids like Leap Letter Factory and all knew the letter sounds before the letter names. The way I see it, sounds are far more important than the names ;)

[usetoschool]

That is how the program we used, Jolly Phonics, works as well.

[SnMomof7]

We did this with my oldest but then she had a hard time learning the letter names later on.

 

So, for DD 2 she learned all the letter sounds first, but I'm not waiting so long to teach letter names!

[emcap]

I will say, however, that this doesn't necessarily lead to the results shown above (reading early). So far, the earliest mine have taken off in reading is 7 and I am still waiting for that "jump" (to chapter books) in my current almost 8-yr-old.

 

 

This is true for us as well, right down to the ages. Now my just turned four yo, on the other hand, who learned his letter names first, is starting reading much earlier.

[Snowfall]

We did that, but like some others said, it didn't have my dd reading early.

[Tracy]

This is the recommended way to teach reading in SWR.

[Cassy]

That is how the program we used, Jolly Phonics, works as well.

 

Another Jolly Phonics user :001_smile:.

 

I couldn't imagine any other way of teaching reading. Teaching the letter sounds first just seems to make so much sense to me.

[Donna]

Didn't really teach dd to read this way on purpose but she learned this way on her own. She learned the letters as sounds from Leap Frog letter factory when she was very young...didn't learn letter names until much later. She learned to blend CVC words very early as well....we did play a game with bathtub letters while bathing where we switched a letter then said the new word or funny gobbledegoop we made up so one might call that teaching.

 

She seemed to stall there for awhile and lose interest in reading herself, then suddenly just brought me a book one day and could read...no sounding out words, just reading fluently anything she picked up.

[EmeraldGirl]

Just echoing what has been stated already. We use SWR and I totally agree with the approach. Somehow they learn the letter names b/c we talk about them by name when referring to the rules and when introducing capital letters for the beginning of a sentence. I haven't spend any 'formal' time on the letter names.

[IlluminatedAttic]

This is what we do as well. Well, we try our best with an interfering Granny who decided our son was missing out on a vital part of childhood not knowing the ABC song. Throw in a well meaning (but exasperating) Music Together teacher who thought it was a great idea to end every class with that song and guess what the first thing my son sang to his baby sister was? Ugh! At least ds listened when I later explained why we wanted to wait to teach her that one and has concentrated on other songs ever since.

[TCB]

DD11 started school in England, age 4, and learned to read then. I always remember her teacher saying, "By all means teach them letter names but teach them the sounds first, very important." This has worked very well for both our girls. We used Jolly Phonics as well to teach DD7 at home when she was 5.

Both DDs are reading 5+ years above grade level so I personally would recomend this method. We were determined to teach reading via phonics for our youngest so made sure she learned before starting Kindergarten at school. Then we decided to homeschool so in the end it didn't matter. We just did not want her to learn the 'whole language' way taught around here. Several of DD11's former classmates are really struggling with reading now having been taught the 'whole language' way.

Edited May 21, 2011 by tcb

[Momling]

In our Montessori school, they taught the sounds rather than the alphabet. In fact, I remember my girls' teacher telling us an anecdote about how she took her 5 year old to the optometrist and instead of naming the letters on the eye chart, he sounded them out.

[abbeyej]

We did letter sounds first as well.

[black_midori]

That's pretty much exactly how I taught my now-5yo (he was reading by himself over a year ago, though, by sounding things out - he was just copying the lessons I gave his 7yo brother!). I used to tell him "I don't CARE what the name of the letter is, just tell me the SOUND!" :)

[kolamum]

That's how they teach it in 100 EZ Lessons isn't it? We would have done it that way HAD we not all ready learned the ABCs before discovering that programme. :D

[kalanamak]

I

 

Anyone else do something similar, or am I just way out there all by myself?

 

I did it, at the idea of Ruth Beechick. We were so good at it, when I had kiddo taken in for an eye check (he was covering one eye to read, but only needed readers for about half of first grade when the print got smaller). The lady had been examining children's eyes for over 20 years. Faced with

 

A P E F C L

 

my son said "APE /F/ /CL/ ... what does APE /F/ /CL/ mean?" I told her I hadn't taught him the names of the letters yet and she'd never seen this.

 

I did it because I was afraid kiddo might have inherited his father's severe dyslexia, and even though I wasn't getting any of the early warning signs, I was too scared to make an error, and was very stringent about sitting on his left, etc.

[malyita]

I'm tired of people IRL asking me how I taught my dc to read and then look at me like I have 3 heads when I tell them.

I never taught my dc the names of the letters in the alphabet until after they were blending cvc words.

 

To my understanding, this is the method used to teach in every Montessori school. I just makes so much sense once someone says it; you're trying to get them to be able to read, why not start with the information about the letter that is relevant to reading it? Similarly, when 98% of written communication is in lower case letters, why would you start with upper? Anyway, I wouldn't expect every child starts to read "early" because of this method, but think of what an additional challenge it would be for the kids who don't take to reading easily to first have to weed through the irrelevant information they learned first.

[AngelBee]

I am also doing phonic sounds only to start.

[Jay3fer]

I read about this on Montessori sites and was inspired to try it with my youngest. He was definitely sounding out words earlier than the others and some friends have been amazed at his progress! His phonetic spellings (using fridge magnets, because his fine motor is nowhere near where his intellect is at) are a little weird because he still mixes up K and G sounds (grokodyl = crocodile). Also, he gets REALLY irked about double consonants, silent letters, etc; totally takes is personally, more than any of the other kids. :-)))

 

At 3.5, he's not QUITE reading yet, but he's one good "push" away from being all the way there, if you know what I mean. With so much time outside these days, there's not much reading time, which is as it should be. Time enough to sit with it next winter.

 

Anyway, a few of my friends are doing this now, and I thoroughly approve. If the eye chart is all you're teaching them the letters for, there's time enough for that later, too.