Interesting article on teaching reading in K5...

[Arcadia]

  When you try and try and things DON'T work, it's very hard to sort out if you just didn't try ENOUGH or intelligently enough or what.  I still have that weight on me about dd, just being honest.  I don't think it helps anyone to hug the paradigm if you just do it it works, because sometimes you DO it and it DOESN'T work.  .............HOW CAN YOU NOT KNOW THIS, WE'VE DONE THIS EVERY DAY, EVERY YEAR, FOR 6 YEARS!

 

:grouphug:

 I still can't skip/jump rope or ride a bike after 40 years and I draw a very good pay/salary before I left the work force. Even my hubby tried hard to teach me to ride a bike, he gave up and we ride tandems :lol:

 

That's what I meant. Sorry. I meant today literacy *stuff* is everywhere. Baby toys and toddler toys are heavy on the literacy skills, iPads and Kindles and computers and a million other things are everywhere, and so on.

 

We didn't have all of that growing up. 

 

Even things like the amount of picture books that are available for kids seems like a whole lot more than I was aware of as a child.

 

Even if someone says they don't do a lot of that with their kids I sort of doubt it. 

 

It's just pervasive and everywhere regardless....kids are going to come into contact in some way.

 

That does depend on the area though on the prevalence of tablets and "learning toys" in the households.   Some kids do not get to go to the libraries because no one brings them.  There are kids whose only books are what their teacher issue for the school reading program and/or what they borrowed from the school library.

The libraries have storytime for babies in arms all the way to school age but it is always the same families that show up.  Same for the library reading program for the K-2 crowd that my younger attends, the same families show up week on week even though it is a free drop in program.

 

[PeterPan]

In our personal experience so far, it is possible to learn to read before really talking well. My son is 27 months old and he only routinely says a handful of words in normal conversation. He can pick out, point to, match, etc. all the initial letter sounds even though he can not make all the sounds. BUT he can read more words than he uses in normal conversation. He sounds them out. In fact, he uses letter tiles to help communicate with us since he doesn't talk well yet. For example, if we're trying to guess what he's talking about and we're not getting it, he'll go get the letter magnet the word starts with to help us out. He also is learning ASL so that helps a lot, especially since when he's reading he'll sometimes use ASL if it's a word he cannot say.

 

None of my business, but if you're precisely accurate (that he has 5 words or less and is reading),  you should get some evals.  Animal sounds, etc. all count as words.  He should be WELL over 50 right now with words he can say.  

[Walking-Iris]

In our personal experience so far, it is possible to learn to read before really talking well. My son is 27 months old and he only routinely says a handful of words in normal conversation. He can pick out, point to, match, etc. all the initial letter sounds even though he can not make all the sounds. BUT he can read more words than he uses in normal conversation. He sounds them out. In fact, he uses letter tiles to help communicate with us since he doesn't talk well yet. For example, if we're trying to guess what he's talking about and we're not getting it, he'll go get the letter magnet the word starts with to help us out. He also is learning ASL so that helps a lot, especially since when he's reading he'll sometimes use ASL if it's a word he cannot say.

 

 

My 11 year old can read LOTR fluently, silently and aloud, but struggles to put a coherent sentence together to have a conversation. He was delayed in speaking and the first long-ish thing he said was the alphabet up to P. He had absorbed the Dr Seuss ABC book he loved to hear aloud but just couldn't say it, although he knew it. I have a dear friend who's 6 year old has autism and doesn't speak but a few words, but he's showing all the signs of being able to read and understand print. He needs to to be able to communicate some of his wishes.

 

As for some of the other recent posts...

 

I do agree that there's no substitution for the human voice over technology, but I don't really think that learning to speak before reading or writing is possible for all kids. My oldest can write pages and pages of words, and wants to, but I have had him doing WWE to work on his oral skills. If I had waited on the writing until his oral skills were solid, he would be missing out on something he truly excels at and enjoys. Something that bothers me about classical education, but that's another thread. ;)

 

 

Anyway I didn't multi quote the other responses, but no I'm not confusing what literacy means. I'm more than aware of the importance of oral language. 

[Sarah0000]

None of my business, but if you're precisely accurate (that he has 5 words or less and is reading),  you should get some evals.  Animal sounds, etc. all count as words.  He should be WELL over 50 right now with words he can say.  

Oh no, he's said a lot of words over time including complete sentences, but he mostly has said them just once. He only has a handful of words that he uses on a daily basis, not including animal sounds which I didn't realize counted. I was just illustrating that it's not absolutely necessary to be able to say all the sounds or be talking well in order to read.

 

Edited to add that he does tell stories and nursery rhymes and things of that nature, but it's in ASL. Not sure how much that changes anything.

[SKL]

Bc it does not work that way. Cognitive development is a real factor in learning. How many posts are there on this forum about children eager to learn to read and know their phonograms and can't blend. Or they are able to blend initial sounds without the final sound. Based on their descriptions, it isn't for lack teaching or desire on part of the child. It is really linked to the mental development of the brain. It is why there is a range of normal for reading. 5-7 is going to be the majority of the bell curve with statistical anomalies existing earlier and later.

 

The disconnect with modern educational theory is that somehow entering school knowing letters and sounds-- which is simple recall and why younger kids can learn the association between the picture (letter) and the associated sound -- means they are more prepared to learn to read. That is a fallacy. Kids that don't know their letters/sounds and are more cognitively mature (not advanced bc this is not a factor of intelligence but simple growing.....it would be like suggesting the taller kid is smarter) can easily master the letters and sounds and read earlier than a child that may have entered k with those skills but still can't read.

 

There is a fundamental lack of understanding about cognitive development. Language rich environments with lots of stories and phonemic games( rhymes, sound games, etc) will do far more to enhance cognitive development of phonemic awareness than teaching letters and sounds.

 

Pushing to do things earlier than age appropriate does not mean they end up a yr ahead.

 

You missed the part about kids having to start pre-K (and therefore KG, 1st, etc.) at an older age because the average kid won't be able to handle all that is asked at the traditional age for that grade level.

 

So where kids used to be in KG at 5, now 5yo school will be called pre-K and 6yo school KG etc.  Which is already happening to a large extent in some parts of the country.

[SKL]

My kids didn't watch TV (still don't) and had very little screen time prior to age 5.  I could not stand LeapFrog Letter Factory so that was out, LOL.

 

They did learn all their letters by 5 (and one was reading chapter books effortlessly on that birthday).  One of them absorbed everything magically, the other was still mastering the letters at 4.5.  Had she not had vision therapy at age 3-4, she would have certainly missed the 5yo ABC milestone.  :)  She still didn't know much about phonics, but we worked on it every day until it clicked sometime that year.  Thankfully, she was a child who could sit and cooperate with book learning.  Lots of kids that age are better off doing other kinds of things.

[Tanikit]

What I want to know is: what are the actual long term goals of this early education? I still believe that countries want to produce things - not just fix things if they want to get ahead in the world and remain a power house. Also countries should want its citizens to be contributing to the community in a meaningful way. Much of society has become so competitive that they are looking for only the top people - and then they want the most top people. When even that is not helping the masses.

 

So if we make our students feel dumb at age 5 because they do not know their letters, are we purposely doing this to keep them feeling dumb all their lives - and if that is the case, then what do we want to do with all these people with poor self esteems who feel they cannot do anything later on in life when they enter the job market - it would imply that you want people who do not believe in themselves to just do as they are told. Which is actually NOT how I have seen America behave. Most American children we see have much more self confidence than children from any other country in the world - possibly brought about by America being a power house for so long and teaching its children to believe in themselves even when they are not performing as well as they should be. Perhaps then the constant testing is to bring them back to their senses and stop all the children getting As all the time in order to make them feel good about themselves - I don't know. I know that from generation to generation people change their minds and decide that what they did previously was not good enough while at the same time fighting that how they were brought up was better than how children are being brought up now. 

 

Politics and country dynamics aside though, I want my children to be given opportunities that will help them have the freedom to make their own, hopefully wise, decisions as they grow up and to be able to question and ask and debate why things are the way the are and whether or not they should be changed. I also want them to be able to discover or at least think about how things might be changed and what impact that would have both in the short and long term. Where I live the only way to teach that is to homeschool.

[Korrale]

Which brings up a good point I hadn't thought of.

 

Are there studies or articles about if a child learns something like letter sounds from an app versus a person speaking to them, any differences?

 

It just seems to be the universal band aid for teaching these concepts----throw on a LeapPad video.

Anecdote here!

My son had no speech and was doing speech therapy and was not responding. I bought an iPad under the recommendation of his SLP and he was able to learn his 26 basic phonemes from a child's voice on an app. He would hear /b/ /b/ /b/ ball said and he started saying /b/ /b/ /b/ bah!

He did that with all the letters. I still tried to get him to do it with me, still pretty unresponsive. But at least now I knew he COULD make the sounds.

[Ausmumof3]

Anecdote here!

My son had no speech and was doing speech therapy and was not responding. I bought an iPad under the recommendation of his SLP and he was able to learn his 26 basic phonemes from a child's voice on an app. He would hear /b/ /b/ /b/ ball said and he started saying /b/ /b/ /b/ bah!

He did that with all the letters. I still tried to get him to do it with me, still pretty unresponsive. But at least now I knew he COULD make the sounds.

I have wondered about the long term effect of iPad use by my two year old... He's definitely learned words and matching skills using it, even letter matching skills.

 

What I see though is with a lot of the puzzles they just have to drag the pieces in roughly the right position, and the. The iPad does the rest. They are getting the intellectual skills happening but missing out on the fine motor skills of a physical puzzle. Likewise with the voice stuff, they are learning the actual words, but I guess they aren't getting the non-verbal communication skills, that are a part of communication. Though kids who spent a lot of time reading books, can have similar issues - great vocabularies that they can't use in general conversation.

 

I think the key is not overusing them. Sure, if a parent can't be available they are an ok short term substitute, but they are not a complete substitute for other activities. Thankfully mine is a little bored of it at the moment, wish I could say the same for my older kids.

[Korrale]

I have wondered about the long term effect of iPad use by my two year old... He's definitely learned words and matching skills using it, even letter matching skills.

 

What I see though is with a lot of the puzzles they just have to drag the pieces in roughly the right position, and the. The iPad does the rest. They are getting the intellectual skills happening but missing out on the fine motor skills of a physical puzzle. Likewise with the voice stuff, they are learning the actual words, but I guess they aren't getting the non-verbal communication skills, that are a part of communication. Though kids who spent a lot of time reading books, can have similar issues - great vocabularies that they can't use in general conversation.

 

I think the key is not overusing them. Sure, if a parent can't be available they are an ok short term substitute, but they are not a complete substitute for other activities. Thankfully mine is a little bored of it at the moment, wish I could say the same for my older kids.

I guess this is me but I always sit with my son while he plays the iPad. I may be beside him reading. But we are often touching and lounging comfortable. He also only gets to play educational apps. And it is only for 10-30 minutes a day. More often averaging about 15 minutes. We also have very limited TV time and pretty much no toys with batteries. Just our philosophy. He spends most of his day playing with simple things or reading books. I agree they can also get so absorbed in a book that they don't want to interact socially or practice fine and gross motor skills.

[PeterPan]

Oh no, he's said a lot of words over time including complete sentences, but he mostly has said them just once. He only has a handful of words that he uses on a daily basis, not including animal sounds which I didn't realize counted. I was just illustrating that it's not absolutely necessary to be able to say all the sounds or be talking well in order to read.

 

Edited to add that he does tell stories and nursery rhymes and things of that nature, but it's in ASL. Not sure how much that changes anything.

Can he say those words again if you elicit them?  For instance, if he has said "door" in the past and you point to the door, can he say door?  I know that sounds nitpicky, but dropping words (saying them a few times and never again) is a HUGE red flag for apraxia.  Again, could be nothing, and we could be talking right past each other.  I'm just taking what you say very literally and saying it's really easy to go "wow my precocious child" and miss the SN going on.  My dd, for instance, wouldn't color at age 5 but LOVED to sculpt, craved it.  I just assumed she didn't want to color because coloring was uncreative.  Turns out she is low tone and had some issues going on that she needed OT for to get her writing more comfortable.  Go figure.

 

So anyways, at age 2, the BARE MINIMUM they're wanting to see is 50 words, where words can include animal sounds (quack, moo, etc.).  Dropping words, too few words, number of words not increasing, serious intelligibility issues beyond what are age-typical (there are percentages for each age of what should be intelligible), oral tone issues (fatiguing when eating, refusing certain textures of foods), issues with rounding/blowing bubbles/other motor control, etc. would all be red flags to get checked for verbal apraxia.  I know I wasn't at all clued into it, and the *old* advice was wait till 3, no biggee.  Now the specialists will intervene a lot earlier.  Given the hyperlexia you're describing and the way you're describing his speech, you might want to at least sit down with him and do an inventory and be very precise about what he has right now and google for some standards to compare that to. 

 

His use of ASL indicates there's no language delay.  That's why the question of his speech is important, because praxis is motor control, not a developmental delay.  I'm not saying he has praxis.  I'm just saying that you've said some things that would at least suggest you might want to sit down and inventory where he's at.  

[PeterPan]

My 11 year old can read LOTR fluently, silently and aloud, but struggles to put a coherent sentence together to have a conversation. He was delayed in speaking and the first long-ish thing he said was the alphabet up to P. He had absorbed the Dr Seuss ABC book he loved to hear aloud but just couldn't say it, although he knew it. I have a dear friend who's 6 year old has autism and doesn't speak but a few words, but he's showing all the signs of being able to read and understand print. He needs to to be able to communicate some of his wishes.

 

As for some of the other recent posts...

 

I do agree that there's no substitution for the human voice over technology, but I don't really think that learning to speak before reading or writing is possible for all kids. My oldest can write pages and pages of words, and wants to, but I have had him doing WWE to work on his oral skills. If I had waited on the writing until his oral skills were solid, he would be missing out on something he truly excels at and enjoys. Something that bothers me about classical education, but that's another thread. ;)

 

 

Anyway I didn't multi quote the other responses, but no I'm not confusing what literacy means. I'm more than aware of the importance of oral language. 

I talk about this all the time, so forgive me, but what I've read is that about 50% of the speech issues in spectrum will be due to praxis.  You might toss out the idea of PROMPT to your friends.  It has been amazing for my boy.  Our therapist is working with a teenage boy on the spectrum who was non-verbal when he started.  He's getting breakthroughs, but it takes so long.  PROMPT addresses the motor control aspect of apraxia, so it is useful once there is communicative intent.  If it's a developmental delay, mutism, etc. holding it back, then it's not what they need.  PROMPT has only been around about 10 years, so it's one of those things that they wouldn't have even found out about during their initial searches for options.  There's a very informative 45 min. lecture by Deborah Haydn about it on youtube.

[Sarah0000]

Can he say those words again if you elicit them?  For instance, if he has said "door" in the past and you point to the door, can he say door?  I know that sounds nitpicky, but dropping words (saying them a few times and never again) is a HUGE red flag for apraxia.  Again, could be nothing, and we could be talking right past each other.  I'm just taking what you say very literally and saying it's really easy to go "wow my precocious child" and miss the SN going on.  My dd, for instance, wouldn't color at age 5 but LOVED to sculpt, craved it.  I just assumed she didn't want to color because coloring was uncreative.  Turns out she is low tone and had some issues going on that she needed OT for to get her writing more comfortable.  Go figure.

 

So anyways, at age 2, the BARE MINIMUM they're wanting to see is 50 words, where words can include animal sounds (quack, moo, etc.).  Dropping words, too few words, number of words not increasing, serious intelligibility issues beyond what are age-typical (there are percentages for each age of what should be intelligible), oral tone issues (fatiguing when eating, refusing certain textures of foods), issues with rounding/blowing bubbles/other motor control, etc. would all be red flags to get checked for verbal apraxia.  I know I wasn't at all clued into it, and the *old* advice was wait till 3, no biggee.  Now the specialists will intervene a lot earlier.  Given the hyperlexia you're describing and the way you're describing his speech, you might want to at least sit down with him and do an inventory and be very precise about what he has right now and google for some standards to compare that to. 

 

His use of ASL indicates there's no language delay.  That's why the question of his speech is important, because praxis is motor control, not a developmental delay.  I'm not saying he has praxis.  I'm just saying that you've said some things that would at least suggest you might want to sit down and inventory where he's at.  

 

I could try to prompt him to say more words and find out. Do you think it could still be an issue if he reads words aloud from books just fine? He can read aloud way more words than he uses. He does not have any issues with eating, blowing bubbles or making animal sounds.

 

[Korrale]

I could try to prompt him to say more words and find out. Do you think it could still be an issue if he reads words aloud from books just fine? He can read aloud way more words than he uses. He does not have any issues with eating, blowing bubbles or making animal sounds.

 

My son was the exact same way. He could read. But had no spontaneous speech with the exception of a few simple words. Gah, dada. He had a preliminary diagnosis for Autism. We did early intervention. And I did PRT at home. He talks fine now. However I do not regret EI for a second. He may of got there on his own time. Or he may not have. We will never know.

If you are in the US, early intervention is completely free.

[PeterPan]

I could try to prompt him to say more words and find out. Do you think it could still be an issue if he reads words aloud from books just fine? He can read aloud way more words than he uses. He does not have any issues with eating, blowing bubbles or making animal sounds.

 

 

 

My son was the exact same way. He could read. But had no spontaneous speech with the exception of a few simple words. Gah, dada. He had a preliminary diagnosis for Autism. We did early intervention. And I did PRT at home. He talks fine now. However I do not regret EI for a second. He may of got there on his own time. Or he may not have. We will never know.

If you are in the US, early intervention is completely free.

This.  We're not meaning to scare you, Sarah, but there actually is something called hyperlexia.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperlexia  It's really easy to see things, not have anyone to compare them to, and not realize when you're seeing red flags for something.  I had red clues for my dd's issues and said all kinds of things over the years that somebody could have called me on and said you know, you really ought to be looking into that.  No one did, and I wish someone had.  I don't know if I would have been ready, but it would have saved us a lot of grief if we had figured stuff earlier.  Well that's not true.  No one did till it got really bad and blaring obvious, then multiple ladies from the board wrote me privately and begged and compelled.  :D  The ladies of the board are awesome and they speak the truth to you as they know it.  They speak from where they've been. 

 

We don't know your whole situation.  I know you're saying things that are off of developmental norms, and any time you have that and big discrepancies, you really want to check what's going on.  Earlier is better.  Nothing improves by waiting, and if it's nothing, well then you know.   :)

[RootAnn]

I love how this thread has morphed into being very helpful to some moms.  :grouphug:

My ds#2 didn't spontaneously talk until he was almost 3. He only had a handful of words he could repeat when prompted but wouldn't say on his own. We had him evaluated by the local school district and he qualified for services (three sessions per month or four if he attended the PS's preschool full time). We weren't impressed with the level of knowledge by the therapist or the person who would be doing the therapy (not a speech therapist, just a 'helper') or the amount of services they offered. After doing quite a bit of reading on here, we decided to try flax seed oil (#1 rec was fish oil, but I already had the flax seed oil on hand since some of the rest of the family take it) while looking into other speech therapy possibilities. He started speaking spontaneously within three days. Now, he's up to where he should be for his age, but still has some age-appropriate speech issues to work through (as does ds#1).

 

I'd echo Elizabeth on getting an eval. But it doesn't hurt to try diet changes or supplementation. The Learning Challenges board has some good threads on both.

[IsabelC]

I think there definitely needs to be more parent involvement in the case of some kids. Whether or not to teach reading depends on the kid, the situation, etc but I'm pretty sure most experts agree that reading to kids is a good thing. Yet apparently some kids arrive in school never having been read to. In my daughters 4yo kinder class, the teacher said she regularly encounters kids who do not know how books physically work. As in, they don't know how to hold the book, open it, that the pages proceed from front/left to back/right (and no, this isn't an area full of Arabic readers who learn the other way round or anything like that), that the marks on the page represent words in the story. My mind was boggling to think how that could even happen. But apparently there are adults who don't read books! Who'd have thunk it?!

 

Seriously, I sometimes forget how lucky we and our kids are, and what a bad start some kids get.

Also, when I think about how hard a teacher would have to work to teach a class where some kids are reading fluently while others struggle to open a book, I can see why being a great teacher is such a challenging job.

[PeterPan]

I think there definitely needs to be more parent involvement in the case of some kids. Whether or not to teach reading depends on the kid, the situation, etc but I'm pretty sure most experts agree that reading to kids is a good thing. Yet apparently some kids arrive in school never having been read to. In my daughters 4yo kinder class, the teacher said she regularly encounters kids who do not know how books physically work. As in, they don't know how to hold the book, open it, that the pages proceed from front/left to back/right (and no, this isn't an area full of Arabic readers who learn the other way round or anything like that), that the marks on the page represent words in the story. My mind was boggling to think how that could even happen. But apparently there are adults who don't read books! Who'd have thunk it?!

 

Seriously, I sometimes forget how lucky we and our kids are, and what a bad start some kids get.

Also, when I think about how hard a teacher would have to work to teach a class where some kids are reading fluently while others struggle to open a book, I can see why being a great teacher is such a challenging job.

Actually I don't read a lot anymore.  I used to, but in the last few years it sort of slipped into a mess without me realizing it.  I found myself scanning books more quickly, skipping pages, etc.  I just figured I was bored.  Turned out I needed reading glasses, or rather bifocals if I weren't so vain, lol.  I keep them separate, and now I can sit down and read a book again.  You just never know what's behind people...

[PeterPan]

I love how this thread has morphed into being very helpful to some moms.  :grouphug:

My ds#2 didn't spontaneously talk until he was almost 3. He only had a handful of words he could repeat when prompted but wouldn't say on his own. We had him evaluated by the local school district and he qualified for services (three sessions per month or four if he attended the PS's preschool full time). We weren't impressed with the level of knowledge by the therapist or the person who would be doing the therapy (not a speech therapist, just a 'helper') or the amount of services they offered. After doing quite a bit of reading on here, we decided to try flax seed oil (#1 rec was fish oil, but I already had the flax seed oil on hand since some of the rest of the family take it) while looking into other speech therapy possibilities. He started speaking spontaneously within three days. Now, he's up to where he should be for his age, but still has some age-appropriate speech issues to work through (as does ds#1).

 

I'd echo Elizabeth on getting an eval. But it doesn't hurt to try diet changes or supplementation. The Learning Challenges board has some good threads on both.

Ooo yes, flax oil helps here too!  But for us, flax oil unlocks things, lets the connectors, well, connect.  The therapy is still necessary to actually get the circuits going, get the motor control patterns taught.  In ds' case, no therapy, no speech.  It *can* happen that you get told by an SLP that it's apraxia and it's actually a developmental delay.  So with that, from what I understand, you're more likely to see that pattern of no speech and then BAM, it comes in and doesn't seem to have a problem.  Ds, on the other hand, has the symptoms of praxis EVEN WITH his speech coming in.  You still see his issues with rounding, tongue placement, jaw tightness, word retrieval, etc.  Waiting would have made no difference.  But yes, omega 3 gets the juices flowing.  When my ds was young, it literally seemed to turn his speech on (and conversely off if we missed it).  

[SKL]

I never felt comfortable with the idea of electronic teaching tools.  Though, I did have a lot of toys that talked in multiple languages.  (My kids are from a Spanish-speaking country so I wanted them to hear Spanish and English.)  My kids never gave a hoot about any of those talking toys.  Waste of money.  (Other kids might benefit, but mine didn't.)

 

My daughter who has learning challenges did not even watch DVDs when I had them on, unless they involved music or dance.  For whatever reason, that medium just wasn't going to work for her.  Maybe her vision and auditory processing problems made it all gobbledy-gook.

 

My kids' speech didn't develop the usual way.  But one thing I noticed was that every time they went to visit the grandparents, both would suddenly shoot ahead in speech.  I guess hearing different people talking is really helpful.  Not sure of the science behind it.

[My3girls]

We must have grown up in completely different environments bc things are way more audio/visual today than when I was a child. Audio/visual is available on demand anywhere today. When I was a kid, we had a cottage that had no tv reception, no telephone, and the radio was intermittent. We did not possess DVDs or even VHS. You didn't watch anything unless it was homemade movies, but more realistically it was a slide show.

 

Print was everything, especially for entertainment purposes.

 

I had TV with like 4 channels.  I spent hours and hours reading.  Now, my kids are so saturated with electronics that they have no desire to read.  It's not nearly as exciting in their opinion.  I am trying to work on that, but it's an uphill battle.

 

As far as exposing kids and them picking it up like sponges, I have 2 who did and 1 who did not.  I read and sang to them the same, and they all had the educational toys and books.  However, dd2 never did learn to sing the ABC's.  She never learned to sing any song.  We had to teach her the ABC's with foam letters in the tub, and a Leapfrog DVD.  She was completely a visual learner, not auditory.  This made it really hard for her to pick up the sounds.  She could identify the letters and write most of the letters by the begining of kindergarten, and eventually, she recognized the sounds of individual letters.  She still does not know the 110 letter sounds, though.  She still cannot blend well.  She has basically learned to read from sight which I do not think is optimal and has taken her longer than my other two who learned phonically. She is 9 and doesn't read as well as her 7 year old sister, but she's reading. 

 

Because the school is set up for her to be reading 90 words a minute by the end of the second grade, she could not keep up.  I think reading fluency tests are the worst thing to hit the public school system.  I would rather my child understand what she is reading than to read fast.  Once I slowed dd2 down and reassured her that I was not timing her, her accuracy improved, her comprehension improved, and she started progressing with her reading where she had been stalled out for almost a year.  Ok that was a little off topic... sorry... end rant. :)

[Arcadia]

Because the school is set up for her to be reading 90 words a minute by the end of the second grade, she could not keep up.  I think reading fluency tests are the worst thing to hit the public school system.  I would rather my child understand what she is reading than to read fast. 

 

*sigh* what is speed reading doing in elementary school education. I haven't even type 90wpm in a long time and I don't think I could ever read that fast out loud.  Luckily the public school my older went to only test for reading comprehension and never for speed.

[NASDAQ]

Thank you.  I appreciate this additionally because it seems like your kids are NT (neurotypical).  It's one thing for a kid with speech problems to show a pattern and it's another when you realize you have a pool of totally typical kids and that totally typical kids can have that range at that age.  So thanks for sharing your normalness I guess.   :D

 

Both older kids do appear to be NT, although I have to admit that I was a bit freaked out for awhile there with the firstborn. She just really, really, really wasn't interested in the alphabet. Really. Really really. Eventually we broke through with pigheadedness and bribery, but I'm happy I left it til five. I probably could have stood to wait until six, but I'm neurotic. Then my second shift (3 &1) hits all their milestones _early_, so I've got whiplash.

 

[MistyMountain]

On this topic I don't quite fit in with either side. I don't like all the pressure out there for kids who may just not be ready or interested in letters, numbers reading and math but they are certainly learning. There is a lot of pressure on 5 and 6 year olds who may just need more time. Not being precocious doesn't even mean that later in life that person could become advanced.

 

At the same time I actually don't have a problem at all with early learning or think it is detrimental like I see a lot of things claiming. I did start early learning with my youngest when she was a toddler and she just didn't take in letter sounds or numbers. At times I admit I can get worried when I see what others who did early learning with their children and they learned to read and do advanced math. I know though that she is probably fine and that not really getting all that excited about letter sounds and numbers at 3 and my son who is really struggling in the same stage of reading he was in 1.5 years ago doesn't really say much about where they will end up later in life. I don't have a problem with teaching kids early and catching things early but I am not a fan of all kids that are in such a such grade should be doing this and if they aren't then they are failing. I think it is crazy to test not yet kindergartners on if they know all the sounds of multi letter phonograms because most have not been exposed to that? I like using phonograms to teach but most schools around here don't even use them.

 

I also not a fan of what they do with the kids that are struggling. There is minimal help in my area for kids without cognitive delays who have learning issues like dyslexia, dysgraphia, discacula, audio processing disorder, etc etc. A lot of time kids are just given more time using the programs that they are not successful with with rather then using methods for those specific conditions. Some kids need more time for their brain to mature or have different strengths and weaknesses and others have learning disorders.

[PeterPan]

I never felt comfortable with the idea of electronic teaching tools.  Though, I did have a lot of toys that talked in multiple languages.  (My kids are from a Spanish-speaking country so I wanted them to hear Spanish and English.)  My kids never gave a hoot about any of those talking toys.  Waste of money.  (Other kids might benefit, but mine didn't.)

 

My daughter who has learning challenges did not even watch DVDs when I had them on, unless they involved music or dance.  For whatever reason, that medium just wasn't going to work for her.  Maybe her vision and auditory processing problems made it all gobbledy-gook.

 

My kids' speech didn't develop the usual way.  But one thing I noticed was that every time they went to visit the grandparents, both would suddenly shoot ahead in speech.  I guess hearing different people talking is really helpful.  Not sure of the science behind it.

Well for what it's worth, my ds didn't sit for much tv at all for a while, then a little if it was what he really wanted.  Now he sits for a while and is then back up moving and playing, even if he asked for the show.  So yesterday he watched some tv and I came down and found this HUGE scene of toys.  He had used his blocks and built some sort of idol to an ancient fire god (what he said) and was building a house with legos and of course had his usual super structs out.  That's his version of watching tv, lol.  I assume he'll get an adhd, emphasis on the H, label.   :lol:   We don't *think* he has an auditory processing disorder, but absolutely I would think that would affect how a dc behaves when they watch tv and do language-based things.

 

As far as the grandparent bump, yes we had that a lot with dd.  Honestly, I think it's because they get really focused conversation.  Dd, btw, seemed totally normal in speech except that she'd be really on the spot if you asked her something and she'd lock up and get frustrated.  Turns out she has poor word retrieval on a level typical of dyslexics and apraxia.  In other words, I'm not entirely certain that maybe I was working with her *as much* as she needed given the underlying neurological stuff going on that we didn't realize, kwim?  Like you might talk with your kids and work with them a normal amount that would be fine for a NT dc and maybe they actually would benefit from a bit more intensive, intentional work on language every day.  I never got a speech eval on my dd, even though I had those quirks over the years, and it's one of those missed opportunities things, rats, kwim?  Anyways, that's just my theory on it, no precise evidence, just sorta connecting dots.  Ds doesn't seem to bump as much with the grandparents, but then I sit down with him and intentionally max out his speech working together intensively.  It doesn't take much.  Just sit down with the dc for 20 minutes to an hour and do some sort of play together but really MILK it for language, making them explain everything, tell whose turn is next, what do I do now, what did you roll, count while you move, etc.  It's so WTM, hehe.  JW describes doing that in her K5 section of WTM, and it's part of what we do in ST, putting words to EVERYTHING.  If you do that in an intentional way for a bit each day or say 3-4 days a week, you might get that bump yourself with them.  And you can really do it with anything (board games, library books, I Spy books, etc.).

[Ausmumof3]

I guess this is me but I always sit with my son while he plays the iPad. I may be beside him reading. But we are often touching and lounging comfortable. He also only gets to play educational apps. And it is only for 10-30 minutes a day. More often averaging about 15 minutes. We also have very limited TV time and pretty much no toys with batteries. Just our philosophy. He spends most of his day playing with simple things or reading books. I agree they can also get so absorbed in a book that they don't want to interact socially or practice fine and gross motor skills.

We had similar rules, with the first, but the iPad has been a lifesaver for getting some school done with my older two unfortunately. Also fantastic for dentist visits etc.