reading programs for 3.5 yrs old active boy

[happycc]

My very bored son needs something,,,,,But needs to engage him yet not kill me right now. I don't want anything with a lot of pieces and activities per se. Something that provides small bits of information here and there. No long lessons. Something that just wets his feet a little so he feels like one of the big kids.

 

 

Here have been some thoughts:

All about Reading

Headsprout which is now called Mimio or something like that..he loves mousing around

Funnix (but may be too long for him. Tried demo-he eventually wandered away)

 

Any other suggestions?

[jillian]

Honestly at that age, with our advaned dd, we let her have at Starfall. She would play during her mandatory quiet play time (if she didn't want to sleep), or I'd let her play while I made dinner. She eventually taught herself to read and has been doing C-V-C words now for about 1 year (she turned 5 in december, so right around 4 she started to read) we sounded them out and now she just can read almost everything though still struggles a little with some sight words. Her speed/fluency has really picked up in the last few weeks.

[EKS]

Here's what I did when my son was very young and ready for reading instruction--I made PowerPoint slides of really big letters and taught him the sounds. He sat in my lap and it was like a game. Then I made slides where first one letter appeared, then another, and then another of a CVC word and taught him to read that way. At some point I introduced digraphs the same way.

[happycc]

Kai, do you still have the powerslides? Will you send them to me or post them? Or sell them :laugh:

[happycc]

Jillian:

yes he mouses around starfall. He loves the stories and games. He wants and needs more. I think he wants more instruction.

[jillian]

Ah okay, that I totally understand. That's how my dd is with math and science, sure she loves playing around with games and such on her own but loves us to go deeper and deeper with her.

[serendipitous journey]

I don't know if this would suit; but with Button I worked through Phonics Pathways by having him do just a bit of work (for PP, I made the "games" suggested by the author and read the phonemes/words) and then we'd run around. Races to the car and back in good weather; around the living room; or I'd have do some jumps off the couch. Then just a smidge of reading, run around again.

 

I _still_ do this with this child, though he works for longer stretches in between. Bot-bot doesn't seem to love this, though, so it may depend heavily on the child's temperament.

[bttrflyvld]

I'd suggest just read to him. It's so good for their language skills. And they pick up reading skills from it.

[TeachingMyTwo]

What about reading bear (a free computer program)?

[imagine.more]

I started Ordinary Parents Guide to Teaching Reading with my 2.5 year old who was bored and wanted to learn to read. It's super simple and has short lessons, most take 5-10 minutes to do. Anyway he read his first bob book after lesson 27 and is reading 3rd grade books now 2 years later. So I think it's successful and I was able to implement it through a colicky baby and then a pregnancy and another baby so I think it's perfect for busy moms. There are no pieces or cutesy complicated instructions and the language is accessible even for young preschoolers.

[Walking-Iris]

http://www.rainbowre...3a3d0b18b7486fc

 

I plan on using this with my dd next year. It could work with your 3 year old. I've interlibrary loaned the entire program before (when my ds was 4) and i thought it was a bit babyish for him. I think a 3 year old would like it a lot better. I honestly wouldn't worry about buying the whole kit. Some of the stuff you can get inexpensively elsewhere. Clocks, puzzles, shoelaces, songs etc. The math part called for counting with "counting sticks" ---aka Popsicle sticks. Really I think it's a bit expensive for what they offer you. The teacher guide had some fun activities, but still nothing that couldn't be picked up somewhere else.

 

But RR offers the preschool activity sheets by themselves. I thought they looked really fun for those times when a little one wants to "do school" too. They would give a 3 year old a feeling of instruction and attention without too much early pressure that could backfire. RR also offers some of the workbooks by themselves.

 

Peak With Books is also a great book to use and let grow with a child. I use that book heavily. Also the HWT Kindergarten Teacher Guide and wooden letters are a great thing for littles to do. They can pick up the actual pencil handwriting skills later.

 

http://www.rainbowre...3a3d0b18b7486fc

I have this and pull ideas out of it for my dd all the time. Likely I will more often as she gets older.

[GSOchristie]

We are doing WRTR phonogram cards with my 3 year old. We only intro 1 new card every three days, so super sssllllooowww, compared to my then 5 year old who did 3-5 new ones a day. We review 3-5 minutes with the cards, then write in salt/sand/shaving cream for the written review. As we read, I will have him point out the phonograms he knows occasionally, but don't really push it. With my six year old, it was like magic when it clicked, I'm assuming it will be the same way with Jax.

[reign]

I think that 100ezl works very well for young children. It is pretty easy and painless. The lessons start out very short but build. Does he know All his letter sounds. I prefer to have the sounds learned first then staring the program. We used headsprout with 4year who loved it. The lesson take 20-30 mins which was way to long for my oldest at the same age. It is very repetitious. Same types of games over And over but with different letter/characters.

[Maela]

This is a great question and I'll be following. My 3yo DS is all of a sudden catching on to letter sounds and asking me when he can read. I was just thinking about this today.

[edeemarie]

I tried using PAL reading for ds when he was 3.5 but it was a miserable failure- too many parts, too many worksheets, too much sight reading. So we went back to what we used for the 2 oldest- AlphaPhonics. It is so simple and can be done in little bits. Since ds is still young I just go at his pace- if he wants to do more we do and if he wants to stop we stop. It is so gentle and easy to use. I am also working on his phonograms using Writing Road to Reading, but most of his basic letter sounds he already knew from Letter Factory.

[lea_lpz]

I can't imagine my 3 1/2 year old learning to read, but I do have a girl in my AHG troop who's daughter is a fluent reader at 5, so my guess is she started at 3 1/2. She can read at probably a 3rd grade level! I would try any popular reading program that works and move through it slower to accommodate his attention span if you decide to go ahead with teaching him to read....but I personally think it would be useful to focus on more age appropriate things. Just because he is ready to learn to read doesn't necessarily mean he has to.

 

My son joins my older child in many aspects of her k program and we adjust to his ability for read alouds, Bible, prayer, and some math and language. For example, he has a number jar, but doesn't write the numbers, and he'll sing the ABC songs, letter sound songs, play alphabet / phonics games with us. He is allowed to sit in on math and Lang if he's quiet and doesn't inturpt and often later surprises me because he picked up on her lesson!

 

He also has his very own school time which he likes because it is just for him. We usually do 1 activity with MFW preschool toys, 1 or 2 Road and Staff worksheets, and row a BFIAR book, do we only spend about 15-30 minutes on preschool, but it's amazing how much he's learned from it! I am really confident that what he is learning now is going to build a solid fondation of skills for when he's ready to start k.

 

Plus it is fun for him :)

 

 

[Tanikit]

I also used OPGTR with my 3.5 year old though didn't show her the book at all - I just taught her the phonics rules and wrote the word lists out for her to read much bigger. At the same time she was reading early readers and I pointed out words to her that followed the rules we had covered. She is reading at a 3rd grade level now at age 5.

[Ecclecticmum]

I LOVE Core Knowledge Preschool Book & the accompanying activity books. They are so much fun, only take a few minutes, and some of them allow the kids to play on long afterwards.

 

We've changed our style to more waldorf-inspired instead of classical, but I'm going to still continue to do them, they are fun!

[LilBearsMama]

Check out Reading Eggs. It's pretty fun.

 

We sometimes use Time4Learning and it has some work on phonics and letter sounds. Leapfrog too - Letter Factory has been a great, fun way to practice the sounds.

[StartingOver]

Short and to the point worked for my very active son at that age. I went with Ordinary Parents Guide to Teaching Reading. Writing the new words on the board, with the new letter or combination in a different color. Or we used magnets, or chalk on the driveway... Anything to change it up a bit and keep the lessons really short. I love McGuffey Primer to start out as the reading is very short. We went through McGuffey 2nd reader before moving on to other books. We also used Bob books, and tons of other beginning readers. Very short 5-10 phonics lessons, and short readings of 15 minutes most at that stage.

[lattedrinker]

Seconding the rec for the Core Knowledge workbooks. I know a couple people IRL who love them, too.

[boscopup]

My 3.5 year old is going through Phonics Pathways. We just do however much he wants to do. We usually spend about 5 minutes on it.

[Ottakee]

My sister used the I See Sam books. www.iseesam.com or www.3rsplus.com You can google to find the first 2 sets as free printables as well. Very easy to use, just teach the few sounds and blend them into the words. They add new sounds/words very slowly and stories are really cute for younger kids.

[bakpak]

I have taught lots of reading concepts to my DD3.5, but it was all pretty eclectic and only If she seemed interested, She sounded out her first word at 2.2yo and we've just been taking it slow since then. As others have said, I'd keep it brief and fun. Your son will race along when he's developmentally ready as long as you've covered the concepts.My DD is very focused, but asking her to go down a list of words from OPGTR was NOT something she wanted to do, and neither did I really. It's a great resource for ideas and directionality though. I just showed my DD a few words a day here and there and that's keeping HER asking for more and not getting frustrated with me (she was for a bit when I tried being too rigorous about it). Sometimes she wants to sound out lots of words or do a workbook, but I largely leave that up to her. Her big interest in workbooks is that she likes tracing and mazes and LOVES the Kumon series. I also got her a cheap dry erase board with lines and wrote on it with thin permanent ink and she likes to trace over it with a dry erase pen.

 

So, her fluency is improving and she can sound out pretty long words now, but she still doesn't want to work at it for long periods of time. She likes sounding out a word here or there in a book or taking turns when the book has large font. With chapter books she's in charge of reading the title of each chapter and she loves doing that. I'd work on figuring out what your son enjoys and stick with that, introducing new concepts after the last concept has had some time to sink in. She's occassionally interested in easy readers like the BOB books, but compared to listening to something like Charlotte's Web, those are pretty darned boring and don't hold her interest. The bigger font is the key. My daughter likes 2nd and 3rd grade early readers from the library better for practicing reading. The content is a little more advanced, but there's plenty of easy words mixed in that she can read.

 

I also make sure that many of the words she's sounding out are fun. For example, this week she's randomly found interesting words on her dry erase board: 'sneaky, stinky feet, boink, splash', etc. You want to keep that light shining in their eyes, not squirming and wanting to escape as soon as possible.

 

Your son might like a moveable alphabet or magnetic letters. Putting out 3-5 letters and asking him to spell the word 'cat' out of those can be fun and challenging at first. Learning to place letters left to right, turning the letters the right way around, blending the sounds, etc. You can also improve his listening & spelling by sounding out words as you go about your daily life. 'Do you know where the duh-o-guh is?' My daughter picked this up immediately and is always spelling something out loud to herself. It probably all depends on what type of learner your child is and what would appeal most to him.

 

Good luck!

 

 

Also, FWIW, my daughter LOVES Starfall, although I don't let her do it very often :)

[jenbrdsly]

We've been making homemade phonics books with dot stampers recently. They are a fun, free alternative to Bob Books. Of course, we use Bob Books too! :)

[bakpak]

Fun idea for the homemade book Jen! I hadn't thought of this either until now, but how about coloring in her BOB books for her? :) It might make a welcome change... I'll have to think about this myself!

[LucyStoner]

I am of the read and read some more philosophy. We have plenty of books that we read aloud in copious amounts of time and then BOB and Brand New Readers box sets that he can work on doing his own reading. We point to words as we read and ask him to read things we know or think he can. He knows all his letters and tons of sounds from that.

 

We did the same with our older son, though due to hyperlexia he read super early, and he is a very strong and committed reader.

 

Our 4 year old also spends a lot of time looking at books and has is own library card. For preschool, I think it works by and large. For his own work, you can work on letter recognition and the like. There are so many free resources, games and printables for that.

[MistyMountain]

I did reading bear with my ds who is now 4 and it taught him to blend cvc words. If I could do it again I would use reading bear but I do let me sound it out and model blending without pauses instead of sound it out slow. He learned blending with pauses and I am trying to correct it so he doesn't pause between sounds. I recently started using AAR and AAS with him but very slowly one at a time. He still isn't fluently sounding out words so I am taking it slow. He does know his first 26 phonograms already. It seems like he is on the verge. He has been having instances where he sounds things out much more smoothly or recognizes words faster but then he will go back to the gappy non fluent sounding out. He reads great on starfall but I think he is using the pictures and guessing well by context. He loves doing that though so I let him after we do a lesson. I also use I See Sam books. He doesn't like bob books. Funnix was a fail with him. 30 minutes on a lesson was not happening.

[kiwik]

My ds3.5 is using OPGTR on a small whiteboard. It was a complete bust with ds5.75 when he was 4.5 but it seems to be working with this one. (I owe the book an apology)

[throughpagesandfields]

Counldn't remember if I'd posted in here already. I also have a super busy active 3.5 year old boy who does somehow need intellectual stimulation as well as physical. I've found with him that he really needs to kind of figure out his body more - it helps with his crazyness... if that makes sense. I've started doing a kids yoga tape with him, have been working on breathing and counting when he gets a bit toooooooooo busy... and we JUSt started going to gymnastics with him which I think is maybe the single best thing I've done for him yet as a parent. You can just SEEE his little mind and body coming together when he's there. So for now I'm MOSTLY focusing on Gymnastics, doing the exersize/yoga/movement at hime, we do storytime once a week... and then I'm SLOWLY working on adding small snippets of fucused activity. Kind of as a way for us both to warm up for the fall.... For learning I've found up to this point it really needs to be a physical thing. Which is weird b/c he'll sit and listen to a book for an hour. But he won't engage really with anything unless it involves some kind of physical manipulatives. So I have alphabet cards we work with, some math manipulatives that we "play" with. In terms of PHONICS... I have 2 other programs I want to use when he's ready - but I will say I checked out the Hooked On Phonics from the library to see what it was like one time and he totally got it. We watched the short little videos, and he even almost was interested indoing the workbooks. I think when I first start to really start with him I'll begin with that because there's something about it that was really approachable and non-bookish for him.

 

 

Edited to add... I've seriously considered when I reach the "pick a phonics program and stick with it" phase doing McGuffey's speller and/or primer HEAVILY supplemented with manipulative alphabets. My son has no interest in the leapfrog fridge word whammer thing.