What to use before OPGTR?

[jer2911mom]

Hi,

 

I have a 3.5 yr old and I'm trying to figure out what to do with her to get her ready for OPGTR down the road. I have been using OPGTR with my dd6 and it has worked well. However, my dd6 attended Montessori preschool for 2 years and spent those 2 years getting to the point of reading CVC words. I appreciate the Montessori approach of teaching just the sounds and not the letter names and would like to mimic that. I also appreciate the amount of time they take to work up to reading CVC words. They have lots of phonemic awareness activities. I guess what I'm saying is, I feel like Montessori takes 2 years to do what is accomplished in the first 50 or so lessons of OPGTR (estimating here, don't have the book in front of me), and I want to spread out that learning as well. Is there a curriculum available that would help me do this? I have sandpaper letters and am working with those to teach the sounds, but if there is something that can give me more guidance, I'd like to be using it. I also have Recipe for Reading, but am looking for something more step-by-step.

 

Thanks,

Kathy

[miracleone]

I'm interested to know as well. I have a 3.5 year old too.

[chicagoshannon]

I'd get the Leapfrog Letter Factory video. You could also get letters with the sandpaper feel that they use in Montessori. They had those at my daughters school. They also had picture cards and you had to find the matching sound or blend.

[boscopup]

Leapfrog Letter Factory DVD and starfall.com

 

You don't really need to do anything prior to using it, technically, but I'd learn letters via the frog rather than OPGTR. It's rather boring in OPGTR. The frog is able to teach many kids all their letters and sounds within a few days (which sometimes includes a few thousand viewings :lol:).

[susankenny]

I also recommend the leapfrog videos! Letter Factory & Talking Word Factory are great! Electric Company was fabulous too. If you allow computer time, let them play on starfall and pbskids.org

 

 

Susan

[craftyerin]

I have twin 3yos and a 4yo. They know their basic letter sounds from the Letter Factory dvd and from Leap Frog fridge phonics. I also read to them a TON. That alone would be enough prep for phonics, I believe, but we are going to start AAR pre-level starting in the spring when they're 3.5 and 4.5, just for a more structured pre-k for my 4yo.

[KristenR]

Agreeing with Starfall.com and Leapfrog Letter Factory and the LeapFrog Amusement park one.

[Jane Elliot]

I play these two phonological awareness games from Reading Reflex. (This book is probably in your library.)

 

#1 The Blending Game "Think of a three-sound word. Say the sounds in segmented fashion 'r' 'e' 'd'. Have your child guess the word." If the child gets it wrong: "Repeat the sounds, accentuating and extending the sound she got wrong. EX: 'm' 'aaaaa' 'p'."

 

When he gets good at it, let him think of his own words to segment and you be the guesser.

 

#2 Finding Sounds Around Us "Tell her you are thinking of an animal. Tell her what the first sound you hear in the word is. EX: 'p'. Encourage her to guess what animal you're thinking of."

 

You will be amazed at how ready your child is for OPGTR if you do these games for a few minutes everyday.

Edited August 14, 2011 by Luann in ID

[FO4UR]

I think you are on the right track with sandpaper letters and Recipe for Reading. :001_smile:

 

LeapFrog Letter Factory is miraculous! Totally worth the screen-time!

 

Play memory with letter flashcards...find a match, say the sound.

 

Play bingo with letters.

 

Give her a plain piece of paper and have her do a crayon rubbing of the sandpaper letter, and then draw, cut&paste, or just glue things on that have that sound.

 

Happy Phonics is a set of games. Many would be too advanced for her just yet, but there are several games that would benefit her now. (Phonemic awareness and letter matching.) One of the games is a muffin match - top is a capital letter, bottom is a lower-case. I put magnets on the backs and keep them on my fridge.

 

Recipe for Reading is very good for the step-by-step...just beef it up with things that appeal to your 3yo. There are several Montessori books for that age-range. Check your library.

[MyLittleBears]

The Reading Lesson is really good and takes you to about 2nd grade reading level. It is similar to 100ez lessons because you can start right away without knowing all the letter sounds, but it has a lot less clutter on the page. We combined this with the Leap frog videos (letter factory and talking letter factory) which are amazing! You can pick up in OPGTR from there and that will take you to about 4th grade. We happen to go to PP instead of OPGTR, which is similar but "different".

Edited August 14, 2011 by MyLittleBears

[Tawlas]

We played a lot with Farm Yard Tales Letter Lotto. My 3 yo son loved the FarmYard Tales by Usborne books, so playing a game was super exciting for him. We had letters on side of the game chips, pictures on the other. You could either match the "Sam" to the "Sam" on the board, or the "S" to the "Sam" on the board. He actually seemed to prefer searching for the picture that started with the sound "T", then "M", then "B" etc and lining them all up. We played a ton with them along with Starfall, magnet letters, and Leapfrog Letter Factory. We started OPGTR this week and he's aced the first five letters. If your son is into Dora, Sesame Street, Cars, Spiderman etc I'm SURE you could find a lotto game that corresponds! :001_smile:

[busymotherof4]

I think you would like the book Ready, Set, Read! by Barbara Curtis. It does mention God at times but doesn't seem like it belongs to any one denomination. She patterns her approach after Montessori. The book talks about what to do from birth to age 7 or so.

I also like Starfall.

[SnMomof7]

I agree that Leap Frog is great for teaching letter sounds BUT if you really want to work on phonological awareness to build up to blending, we are really enjoying AAR Pre-1 together.

[EmilyGF]

Read books aloud, play games, squish in the mud, sing songs, bake cookies.

 

When the child is ready, the child can learn letters in very little time.

 

Emily

[jer2911mom]

Thank you everyone for the fabulous suggestions! We do own the Leapfrog DVD so probably will start spending more time with that. I'm going to look into the other things mentioned as well. I appreciate your input!

 

Kathy

[JenniferLynn]

Letter Factory takes care of the first 26 or so lessons in OPGTR. My 3 YO twins sing their phonics ABC song as much as the traditional ABC song. We play games with DD5's AAS tiles too or ABC blocks. Just picking up letters and making their sounds.

[Terabith]

Exposure to letters/ sounds: sandpaper letters, magnets on the fridge, letters in the bath tub, puzzles, etc. I taught them lowercase and sounds first, but uppercase is so ubiquitous in children's culture, that I didn't worry about it. But I mostly referred to letter names as uppercase letters.

 

Leap Frog is good. We also read an alphabet book every day. Lots of good ones, but again, I mostly did sounds. /B, b, b/ bear. We would also talk about other things that started with that sound.

 

Read aloud a ton, and at least once a day would make sure to model pointing to each word on the page.

 

I did lots of sound games. I would lay out three items and talk about what each started with. After awhile, ask them to find what starts with /k/, etc. Play I Spy with sounds. "I see something that starts with...." Play word stretching games. "I'm going to pretend to be a turtle. See if you can figure out what I'm saying. /k/ /a/ /t/." Then I would help her pretend to be the turtle.

 

Lots of nursery rhymes and poems. Lots of work on words that rhyme. Then moving onto words that END with a sound.

 

Modeling spelling on the fridge. I would write words on the fridge, but I would model trying to figure out the sounds for the word. The middle vowel is pretty tricky.

 

Teaching them to understand the concept of words as isolated concepts. I would use blocks for this. I would say a sentence and then say it again slowly, placing one block for each word. Then I would point to each block and say its word. Then I would go back and point to a block at random and say its word. This was all done by modeling. I would do the same thing with teaching the idea that words are made up of sounds. I would say a word and lay out a block for each sound and point to each block, saying its sound.

 

My kids both could identify upper and lower case letters and sounds by 18 months. The could both orally blend words by 2. (If I said the sounds in turtle talk, they could say the word. They could also identify beginning and ending sounds.) However, the jump from oral blending and sound identification to reading was not something that came easily. I think there's a pretty big developmental leap there. Despite pretty strong foundations, my oldest was 4.5 before she really started, and while my younger one could do CVC words at 4.5, at six she's still struggling with words that are much more complex.

 

You could also get the book Montessori Read and Write.

[skeeterbug]

You could also get the book Montessori Read and Write.

 

I second this. If you are interested in the Montessori approach this is very much a step-by-step guide. Easy to implement at home and very gentle.

[jjins]

Two things to consider. First is that Institute for Excellence in Writing has released a great early program. Teaches, reading, spelling and writing. The spelling is AAS. Cannot go wrong there.

 

Second, National Montessori Training Center, a teacher training school in Canada, has put together a homeschooling program fro 3-6 year olds. It is very well reviewed by the Montessori community. BTW, as a Montessori Teacher who has 14 years experience in teaching 3-6 yr olds... they only reason it would take 2 years to learn to read CVC words, is that they teacher is counting the time the students are not learning letter sounds. Most students hit a sensitive period for letter sounds around 4 1/2. During this sensitive period, students will learn letter sounds quickly as well as how to blend them. I am talking sometimes as short as 3 or 4 weeks. Depends on the student, the teacher, and the other students in the environment.

[MeaganS]

Second, National Montessori Training Center, a teacher training school in Canada, has put together a homeschooling program fro 3-6 year olds. It is very well reviewed by the Montessori community.

 

Do you have a link to that? I'm trying to find it and am having difficulty.

 

ETA: Is it this?

[jjins]

Do you have a link to that? I'm trying to find it and am having difficulty.

 

ETA: Is it this?

 

That is it, sorry I meant to link it. Even took the time to look it up! They also have a page on facebook with daily homeschooling tidbits.

 

Jeannette

[jer2911mom]

Thanks, everyone. I really appreciate all the suggestions and will be looking into them, especially the book rec. and the homeschool program rec. Please keep the suggestions coming!

 

Kathy