4 yr old and Explode the Code

[mohop]

I don't officially "home school" my preschooler, but we started recently with short reading/phonics lessons on an almost daily basis. We are basically just going through the Bob books with her and started on the first Explode the Code workbook. She's known all her letter sounds for awhile now, and blending seems to be coming naturally to her. She started off really excited about the workbook and was doing 3-4 pages at a time. However, recently, she's started complaining and saying it's "too hard." In particular, she doesn't like the writing exercises in the workbook.

 

I remember reading in TWTM a criticism of early reading programs that combine reading with writing, with the authors discussing that most kids are ready to read before they are ready to write. So, honestly, I was kind of surprised by how much writing is in the early ETC workbooks. I am tempted to tell my DD she doesn't need to do the writing parts, but really, that's basically half the books we are not doing.

 

What would you all do? Should I try to encourage her to keep chugging through, maybe just a page at a time? Let her skip the writing exercises for now? Maybe just abandon the workbooks altogether for now and come back to them in a couple of months?

 

Fwiw, she turned 4 in June. She's very able and competent. She actually spent last year in a preschool program, and the teachers were all very impressed with her abilities. (I think she tends to "give up" more with me at home than she does with others.)

[Gentlemommy]

I know that the Spalding method teaches writing at the same time as learning the phonograms...so I don't think it's all bad to have them both at the same time. For kinesthetic learners, writing will help them to cement the sounds better.

However, at 4 years old, I absolutely wouldn't push her to do worksheets/writing. If she isn't wanting to do them, back off for a while. Let her explore with letter tiles or magnet letters. Let her practice writing in sand, shaving cream, or forming letters out of play doh.

[alisoncooks]

You could get an ink pad & abc stamps to take a break from the writing... my DD likes that.

[StartingOver]

I don't let writing difficulties, or strain get in the way of my children at any stage of homeschooling. Especially with little ones reading. My 4 year old daughter loves learning to read, and doing math. I scribe for her in ETC, then she copies it if she wishes. ;-) The same with math. I don't require anything before age 5 in my home, and very little then, but if they want to work I will do all I can to enable that.

[Mergath]

My dd is four, and we've also been using ETC and the Bob books, along with some Phonics Pathways, and we're in the same boat. Dd is fine reading CVC words, but lately she wants nothing to do with reading and writing lessons. So for awhile, we're just going to shelve it unless she requests it. After a lot of thought, I've decided I'm not going to schedule reading and writing daily until next year, when she'll be just about 5.5 at the start of the school year.

 

The way I look at it, if reading these words is that hard, it's just not clicking in their brains quite yet, and it's better to wait a bit longer than to force them to do something they aren't ready for yet.

[AdventureMoms]

We've set aside ETC for now, because DD was overwhelmed by the amount of writing. Her reading is well ahead of her writing, but I think that's pretty common for a 4yo. She can write all the letters required for ETC, but it would take about half a page for her to be completely *done* with writing.

 

I plan to pull it back out as a writing exercise and phonics review when she gets to the point where she has the stamina for the writing.

[mohop]

Thanks for the responses! It's reassuring to read that others are in the same place. My DD actually does pretty well with the writing when she really tries, but she just isn't at the point where she has interest in expending very much effort to do something, so she will act defeatist about it and say it's too hard. I don't want her to already dread formal learning, so I think we will hold back a little. I was starting to get frustrated with her lack of effort, but I think I need to just mellow out and focus on making sure she enjoys learning.

[petepie2]

All of mine started ETC fairly young, and I never had them do all the writing. Usually I tell them to "pick 3" to write on a page. And we completely skip the pages that require them to write the words from memory.

[boscopup]

So, honestly, I was kind of surprised by how much writing is in the early ETC workbooks.

 

Keep in mind that these books are not intended for 4 year olds. If they were, they would have very little (or no) writing in them. :)

 

Fwiw, she turned 4 in June. She's very able and competent. She actually spent last year in a preschool program, and the teachers were all very impressed with her abilities. (I think she tends to "give up" more with me at home than she does with others.)

My oldest balked at anything that looked like "school" at age 4. He didn't want to work hard. He liked easy preschool workbooks, because he knew everything in those. He didn't like anything that was a new concept though. I think that's just a factor of being 4. :) If they're balking at age 4, it means you need to back up and do something else - maybe something they already know how to do easily, or at least cut down on the time spent doing the "hard" thing (4 pages of ETC sounds like a lot for a 4 year old... I think we did 2 pages when DS2 was doing ETC1 at age 4). I don't require pushing through "hard" academics until age 5, and even then I try to keep it reasonable. Reading is "hard" for DS2 (he's great at phonics and blending, but remembering a word from one instance to the next... doesn't always happen until he's seen it a LOT). We do a 10 minute session every day. It's enough to get good practice in, but not enough to overwhelm him and cause him to shut down. He's 5.5, and school is required now. At 4, school was optional, and if he was "done", I said ok and we closed the books. I do the same for DS3 (who can blend and can read a little bit). DS3 thinks he wants to do school, but really he just wants to pretend. He's not ready to work hard at school yet. If it gets hard or he thinks it is getting hard, he'll say, "I just don't know." to any question, even though I know he knows the answer. That's the big white flag waving and saying, "I'm not ready for this yet!!!!!" even though he is smart as a whip and learning tons all the time. He's a bit like my oldest was... picking up things more by osmosis rather than direct teaching at that age. My oldest now learns from direct teaching quite well. When he turned 5, something clicked and he was teachable. Before that, it was all osmosis (and he learned a lot that way - reading at a 2nd grade level by age 5, adding and subtracting - including negative numbers, etc... that last one taught by me, but only as a casual discussion when he said you couldn't subtract 5 from 3 or something like that, and I said, "Oh, yes you can! Here, let me show you!" It didn't feel like "school" to him, so he learned it ;) ).

 

I definitely agree with doing the ETC stuff in salt or sand or shaving cream. She might have more stamina that way. But really, if she is done, let her put it away. No need to do 4 pages a day at 4 years old. Just go at whatever pace she wants to do. She's still ahead of the game no matter how slow you go at this point. :)