First Language Lessons for pre-K?

[Porridge]

I have a voracious early reader (DD3.5) who is reads everything in sight. I'm not sure what her current reading level is - she can read Frog and Toad fluently, but can also read more difficult "non-early-reader"books. I've thought it might be nice for her to have some basic instruction in punctuation, grammar and I think she's ready for it. I think it would enhance her understanding of what she's reading.

 

Would First Language Lessons for the Well Trained Mind (level 1) be a good resource?

 

We don't really have formal "lesson" times. I have mostly been teaching on the fly based on her interests. She'll pick up a random book and I'll introduce phonics-based-teaching if she hits a word she doesn't know. (I've been loosely using The ORdinary Parents Guide to Teaching Reading as an reference for myself.)

 

For language instruction, I was thinking I'd also use the book more as a reference for myself, so I know how to teach a concept, rather than as scripted lessons I'd make her formally go through. She's so young, I want reading to be fun and I don't want to squash her enthusiasm with too much emphasis on "academics."

 

Are there other resources you might advise?

[nova147]

We started FLL when DS was not quite 5. The lessons are really short, which was good for him. Does she like to memorize things? Much of FLL is focused on memorization, both of grammar definitions (A noun is the name of a person, place, thing, or idea.) and poems. I don't see FLL as a teacher resource, though. It is parsed into so many lessons that you would probably need to read 10 to 15 lessons (to yourself) to get the idea of how to teach the concept. If you wanted to use it, I would suggest just using it -- limit it to her attention span and interest. If you start working with it one day and she's not into it, drop it.

 

I don't know how much it would help her with reading, but it could be an easy way to introduce more formal learning for the future.

[higginszoo]

I used it with a couple of kids at 4-5, and it worked fine. Sometimes I'd cut out the writing stuff if the child's motor skills weren't up to that yet, and even at that age, the repetition that's built in was a bit much for my dc, so I had to condense, but they did get something out of it, and it made them feel 'big' to have some formal lesson time like their older siblings.

[boscopup]

FLL1 is very gentle and would probably work well, though she may or may not be ready for the narrations that you occasionally see in there. The only question I have is... is she writing? Would she need grammar sooner than normal? Because grammar repeats itself year after year after year, and she may get bored when you hit a point where she isn't ready to go farther and/or doesn't have the writing skills necessary to use the grammar.

 

I'm using FLL a year ahead for my oldest, and he could have easily done FLL4 this year, I'm sure. He's not physically writing much though, because he was not born with a pencil in hand. In fact, he's quite pencil phobic. So I'm not necessarily hitting his challenge level with FLL because he wouldn't be ready to use the grammar yet. Though we did just start KISS, and THAT is challenging, and we both love it. We plan to continue with KISS. Having real sentences from actual literature slows us down nicely. In FLL, he follows the patterns. He learns, but he follows the patterns and finds it very easy. It's the repetition built in that causes him to remember the material. In KISS, there is also repetition, but the sentences don't follow a pattern, so you have to actually look at how a word is functioning in the sentence.

 

Personally, I don't think grammar will really help with reading at this stage, but others may have different opinions. I teach grammar to help writing. If I were to go back in time, I'd probably wait on grammar until my son was ready for the 3rd grade level FLL, then do KISS as we're doing now (I like that FLL teaches the definitions in an easy-to-understand way, and I think it's been helpful when going through KISS). First and second grade grammar were largely useless for my oldest. You see, in first grade, you learn abc, then in second grade you learn abcd, then in third grade you learn abcde and basic diagramming, then in fourth grade you learn abcdef and more diagramming. It's around 6th grade, I think, that programs usually stop spending much time on abc. Seriously, every year, it's, "A noun is the name of a person, place, thing, or idea." Then you find the nouns in some sentences. You learn verbs and adjectives and adverbs, and then the next year you circle back around and again learn about nouns. You can jump in at grade level anytime in grades 1-5 for most grammar programs (including FLL).

 

So just think about where you plan to go after this year. Is she PG and will be doing 5th grade stuff in K? Or is she just an early reader but otherwise your normal-ish highly gifted kid that will work a couple grades ahead? That might affect your decisions on grammar. I'd just hate to see her get bored by the repetition of grammar year after year after year after year (one thing I like about KISS - you are analyzing sentences, and you never drop finding the subject/verb/complements as you learn new things to find, so you don't have to start at the beginning each year - you just add on a new layer).

[Amie]

I have a voracious early reader (DD3.5)...

 

(I've been loosely using The ORdinary Parents Guide to Teaching Reading as an reference for myself.)

 

 

 

This sounds just like me with my oldest at that age. He is now 5.3 and has completed all of the phonics in OPGTR. I picked up a used copy of First Language Lessons 1&2 a long time ago and pulled it out to begin with him at 4. He was capable of understanding it, but I began to question what I wanted to put emphasis on at that age. I know it doesn't take but a few minutes to do a lesson of FLL, but still, I began to look around more and think about ALL of the other things we could devote a few minutes to each day (some things I hadn't thought about before)...memorize poetry, listen to beautiful music, free time on a keyboard (or any instrument), learn to play chess, work through math puzzles, develop fine motor-skills, finger knit, garden, set up a birdfeeder to watch the hummingbirds southern migration...;) you get the picture (and we could spend all day coming up with things). I don't mean to say that you must choose between FLL and all of these other things. But for *me*, I had to think about my personal priorities for this age and decide where to best spend my time and energy. I realized there were a number of things more important to me that we weren't getting around to. So I decided to hold off just a little longer since there will be lots of time to cover grammar/language later. Another thing I took into consideration was trying to plan ahead...if we flew through all of the easier grammar books at an early age, would it eventually leave us hanging? Would I have a 7yo who was done with all the early, repetitive material but not quite ready to handle the more advanced?

 

Also, I think my son will get even more out of FLL now/later than he would have at that age. For example: he has not been an early writer and while we could have skipped the writing portion of FLL, I think he will benefit more from waiting until he can do some of those exercises. And same with the narration mentioned earlier. I pretty much agree with everything boscopup said, and she has a lot more btdt than I do. :001_smile:

 

My experience with an early/voracious reader has been that he has picked up a lot without any formal lessons. We have discussed punctuation and capitalization in the context of his reading once he seemed capable and interested in learning about it. It sounds like you are good at teaching these sorts of things naturally anyway (?). You might like checking out some of Brian P. Cleary's books--fun stories about punctuation and parts of speech--many can often be found at the library. http://www.amazon.com/Brian-P.-Cleary/e/B000APG194/ref=sr_ntt_srch_lnk_9?qid=1330619165&sr=8-9

 

I'm not trying to discourage from using FLL early. I know of plenty of people who used it successfully at pre-k age. I guess I'm just sharing my experience so far. I am still trying to decide if I want to begin FLL sooner than my son's "official-if-he-were-in-public-school" Kindgergarten year this fall. I don't regret waiting this long, and I think his added maturity will only help.

 

ETA: Oh, and welcome to the boards!

Edited March 1, 2012 by Amie

[LisaKinVA]

I've done it both ways...without the writing (when child was young) and with the writing (held off until the child is older). They both worked well.

 

My now 8yo is the child who did FLL 1 & 2 with his older sister. He learned the same material, but didn't do the writing portions. He suffered no ill effects from not doing the written portions and using a grammar program a bit ahead of his grade level (he is in 2nd, using FLL3 without any issues). My 4th grade 10yo finds FLL4 pretty darn easy.

 

My now 5yo has been "introduced" to grammar (because FLL3/4 and MCT we do a LOT orally), but I've held off on formal lessons (FLL1) with her, because she is just not "into" school. She'd much rather play. So... I keep her formal lessons to a minimum, but she's around reading aloud all day, math videos, science lessons and what not all day... and I know she's getting some of the information anyhow.

[Tanikit]

I started my 4 year old rearranging sentences - I'd put the flashcards out in the wrong order and get her to put them in order to read a sentence. Part of this was because she found it fun and another part was to help her fluency as she was complaining that she read too slowly. I found if she understood how a sentence went together enough to rearrange it then she read better. But in doing this with her I had to teach her some grammar starting with capital letters and moving on to verbs as knowing this made it easier for her to work out what order the words went in. She enjoyed doing this and so we may continue if her interest holds.

 

I had an excellent LA teacher when I was in 7th grade who took us well beyond the syllabus into clauses and more complex sentences. She managed to get all of us understanding it - gifted or not, so I feel that if my child were to get bored with parts of speech then I would just take her to the next level. If she doesn't seem interested then I'd just leave it since she is so little.

[ktbooper]

My experience with an early/voracious reader has been that he has picked up a lot without any formal lessons. We have discussed punctuation and capitalization in the context of his reading once he seemed capable and interested in learning about it. It sounds like you are good at teaching these sorts of things naturally anyway (?). You might like checking out some of Brian P. Cleary's books--fun stories about punctuation and parts of speech--many can often be found at the library. http://www.amazon.com/Brian-P.-Cleary/e/B000APG194/ref=sr_ntt_srch_lnk_9?qid=1330619165&sr=8-9

 

 

 

Thanks for the tip on these Cleary books! Had seen one or two of them before, but didn't know there were so many! (and our library has most of them!)

~Kate

[Five More Minutes]

I used FLL1 with my late 3/early 4yo and it was fine, but ... I'm not sure I'd do it again.

 

I really don't think that FLL would help with reading, because it focuses so much on parts of speech. The first half of the level 1 book is about nouns, which I don't think would enrich a reading experience.

 

FLL is very repetitive -- ideal for a younger learner, but also terribly boring for me as an instructor.

 

If I were doing this again, I'd just spend more time reading great books together in pre-K and K.

[Tsutsie]

I agree with the Clearly books - they are well done.

 

When she can write 10 words into a "sentence", not taking structure, spelling, puntctuation or actual handwriting into account - start FLL 1. She will most likely not need all the repetition, at which point you can fast-forward through the book and do FLL 2 in the same year. (It's really just more of the same.)

[minuway]

I think it would work fine - I used it with my accelerated 6 year old because I really didn't want to start doing a heavy grammar program but I thought she was ready for some basics. We didn't do it everyday, just a few times a week, and we sometimes did multiple lessons at a time. My younger kids (who were 3 and 4) did the poetry and parts of speech memorization along with us, so I think it would be fine to try for a pre-k kid, and just modify as you need to. Its pretty cheap, so worth a look.

[Rbsmrter]

I used FLL1 with my late 3/early 4yo and it was fine, but ... I'm not sure I'd do it again.

 

I really don't think that FLL would help with reading, because it focuses so much on parts of speech. The first half of the level 1 book is about nouns, which I don't think would enrich a reading experience.

 

FLL is very repetitive -- ideal for a younger learner, but also terribly boring for me as an instructor.

 

If I were doing this again, I'd just spend more time reading great books together in pre-K and K.

 

:iagree:

I started it with my DD at 4, but I definitely don't think it helped her reading comprehension or writing ability. If anything it's just allowed her to memorize the definitions of grammatical terms for later use. For us, the biggest influence on my DD's reading and writing ability has come from us reading together. We spend a lot of time discussing stories and working on narration. As we spend more time doing that she becomes more familiar with seeing words in print and developing strategies for comprehension. She's also become very interested in writing her own stories based on some of the books we've read. I'm not saying that FLL isn't successful or that we dont enjoy it (her favorite part is the memorization), I just don't think she is at a stage where she can make connections between grammatical rules and her writing. Exposure to books (not language lessons) helped her understand that sentences need to have verbs and the differences between singular and plural (granted she might not have the terminology down, but most of the time when we hit a lesson in FLL she just says "I already knew that!"). It certainly couldn't hurt to start FLL, as it is a gentle program and we've both really enjoyed it, but I think that reading more advanced books and taking the time to discuss them would go a long way in challenging her. :001_smile:

[JohannaM]

You might like checking out some of Brian P. Cleary's books--fun stories about punctuation and parts of speech--many can often be found at the library. http://www.amazon.com/Brian-P.-Cleary/e/B000APG194/ref=sr_ntt_srch_lnk_9?qid=1330619165&sr=8-9

 

:iagree:

 

Also, there are a couple Basher books on Punctuation and Grammar. These books turn different items into 'characters' and are fun to read.

 

My daughter really likes audio books and has enjoyed listening to the Librovox recording of Grammarland.