Advice Needed: 4yr Old Going Through "Ordinary Parents Guide to Teaching Reading"

[Guest rachael777]

My 4 year old son has always been advanced and has known his letters since 18 months old. He has known all of his short vowel sounds and consonant sounds perfectly for around 4 months now. We have talked about the sight word "the" which he has memorized and he understands about periods at the end of a sentence and that the first letter of the sentence and a person's name are capitalized. But for some reason when we go to start blending sounds and trying to read basic sentences (the first few lessons after the learning sounds portion of the book) he gets frustrated and doesn't want to continue. I cover the letters with my finger as he sounds out each letter in the word (he does a perfect job with this part of it) but then when I ask him to blend the sounds he gets annoyed and doesn't seem to be catching on.

 

What should I do?

 

Should I continue to do the same lesson everyday for a few minutes until he starts to understand?

 

Or should I shelve the book for a few months (after all he doesn't officially even start pre school until this fall) and just keep reviewing sounds until he is ready to try again?

 

Or maybe I should try a different reading curriculum with more bells and whistles?

 

Any advice is greatly appreciated!

[kiana]

Put it away and wait for a few months before you try again.

 

Kids knowing letters young and not yet being ready to blend is pretty common.

[MeAndTheBoys]

I think you shelve it.  My oldest and youngest were early sight readers/ letter recognizers--like at the 12-24 month range--but blending takes a different skill level.  Once they GOT blending, it was easy and they zoomed forward.  I couldn't have forced them to figure it out--

 

Put the book away, but continue to mention words.

 

Do you the have Leap Frog Word Factory DVD?  Helpful.

 

We used a book called "Learning through Sounds" alongside OPGTTR and it had a concept of a slide--you draw a slide and put, say an "s" at the top.  And an "a" at the bottom.  And put your finger on the s and say, "ssssssssssssssssssssssss" as you slide your finger down the slide, then when you reach the a, you blend and make it "sa".  We did a LOT of that.

 

And you can put 3 letter words on the slide once you've mastered two--like an "s" at the top, an "a" in the middle and a "d" at the bottom.

 

That's a way to test out if he's ready and show him every now and then while you've got OPGTTR put aside--just do slides on paper or on a whilteboard.

 

Betsy

[ErinE]

Like Kiana said, not uncommon. Dd spent months on basic sounds until the concept clicked. We kept reading and reviewing until she got the idea and we could move on in OPGTR.

[mysticmomma]

Shelve it.

[raptor_dad]

I'd say shelve it.

 

Older DS knew all his letters and sounds before age 2. I can remember a car trip around that age where we distracted him for long spans by asking what letter words started and ended with and for shorter words what vowel was in the middle. It was impressive, at that point he met school criteria for being an emergent reader and could puzzle out many cvc words.

 

Jumping forward, he wasn't able/willing to read BoB books until he was an older 4yo and wasn't reading early readers like Biscuit or whatever until he was a 5yo preschooler. By the end of K, he was reading Oz books and Swallows and Amazons and My Side of the Mountain... call it 4-5th grade level. This year at the end of 1st grade he is currently reading "Lord of the Rings".

 

If your 4yo isn't interested right now I would wait. For these kinds of kids, once the interest is there they can move forward amazingly fast. Instead of teaching reading, I would make sure you are doing read alouds at their cognitive level. DS enjoyed the Little House books before age 3 and other classics at a very young age. I suspect this led to a later start to independent reading since he was more interested in these stories than what he could read himself. But, I also think this explains his advanced vocab and how he jumped 6+years in reading in under 18mos.

[kiana]

If your 4yo isn't interested right now I would wait. For these kinds of kids, once the interest is there they can move forward amazingly fast. Instead of teaching reading, I would make sure you are doing read alouds at their cognitive level. DS enjoyed the Little House books before age 3 and other classics at a very young age. I suspect this led to a later start to independent reading since he was more interested in these stories that what he could read himself. But, I also think this explains his advanced vocab and how he jumped 6+years in reading in under 18mos.

 

Yes.

 

My youngest sibling was still not reading more than cvc words at 8. He always had someone around to read to him. When he finally found something he wanted to read and reread, and nobody else would read it to him, he jumped to grade level in a week, high school level within a month, and within the year he was reading university textbooks for amusement.

[Jackie]

Shelve it since he is frustrated.

 

One of the few things I liked in 100EZ was the "say it fast, say it slow" game. I would say a word sssssssllllllooooooowwwwwwllllllllyyyyyyyy and then ask my daughter to say if fast/regular speed. Alternatively, I would say it regular speed and ask her to say it slowly. I think it helped her hear how the sounds blended together and made the leap into reading easier. We'd play this a few words at a time whenever it popped into my head.

[Garga]

Teaching reading has been the hardest part of homeschooling (so far--the boys just finished 3rd and 6th.)

 

I hated teaching reading.

 

Just had to share. :)

 

If it were I, I'd shelve it. After forcing my kids to sit through reading lessons, I've learned not to force the kids to sit through reading lessons. ;)

[ThoughtfulMama]

Put it away. Read and read books to him. Re-read his favorite picture books a million times until he memorizes them. IMO there is no reason or benefit to working too hard to teach a 4-year-old to read. When he is interested, then he will pick it up much faster.

 

ETA - there is also nothing wrong with a very young child having the interest and learning to read easily.

[SKL]

I would shelve it and point out phonics in the books you read to/with him.  Just here and there.  Like in an abc storybook or rhyming book, that has several instances of a vowel rule on one page, just point it out and see if it's clicking and move on.

 

With my not-so-early reader, I found some books that had a lot of repetition and very few words.  I'd read the stories to her first.  We'd read the same stories every day, adding new pages after re-reading the old pages.  It was so easy that she was motivated to try to read part of it herself.  Eventually things clicked and she was actually reading.  I'm sure this wouldn't work for every kid, but it might be worth a try.

[SeaConquest]

I am also in the 'shelve it' camp. If you are not opposed to electronic use, my son really enjoyed Reading Eggs when he was 3-4. It got him from knowing his letter sounds at 2 to beginning blending at 4. From there, we have done Progressive Phonics, which he preferred to OPGTR, because PP involved us buddy reading together. I think it was less intimidating for him this way, as he has perfectionist tendencies. He's still a fairly reluctant reader at 5.5 (in part because of a vision issue, but probably also because I am pretty lenient about Minecraft), but is currently at a second grade level. 

[raptor_dad]

Different kids learn to read in different ways. I feel like people on WTM have various advice, but few people acknowledge this basic fact. DS7 and DS5 have learned in fundamentally different ways.

 

DS7(describe in my previous post) learned from starfall, watching WordWorld on PBS, BoB books, read alouds, and *lots* of incidental phonics inspired by 100EZ.

 

DS5 is entering kindergarten in the Fall. He has done some starfall and watched WordWorld. Phonics instruction has been a complete fiasco. What has worked for him is self driven writing. This has only been viable for coordination reasons for the last 4mos. Suddenly he is taking off. He can spell better than he can read. Hell, he can spell better than DS7 who is reading "Lord of the Rings" and the college version of Tarbuck's Earth Science this Summer. Figuring out how to spell words seems to be simpler than figuring out how to blend. After writing words a few times he recognizes them when reading and is slowly able to generalize to rhymes(uncomfortably slow for me... but that's my issue not his). Previously, reading about the Spalding method("Writing Road to Reading") seemed like the most daft thing I'd ever seen. Now I have it on hold at the library(Thanks Ellie;) ).

 

It took me longer than I'd like to figure this out. It is possible your child just needs more time but it is also possible other approaches could work better. Luckily, kids are good at giving you hints if other methods are better. Look for these clues and if they aren't obvious just shelve it for a few months.

[Tracy]

A lot of people do not realize that blending for reading involves multiple skills.  When a child is having difficulty blending, it is because one or more of those skills are not yet strong enough to do them all at once.  Blending for reading means that he has to see the first letter, associate that letter with its appropriate sound, remember that sound while he figures out what the next sound is, and then remembering both sounds while figuring out the next sound, all the while recognizing digraphs and knowing which of multiple possible sounds a letter(s) might make. That is a lot for a 4yo to think about all at once!

 

You first need to back up and see if he can blend orally.  If you give him the separate sounds of /k/ - /a/ - /t/, can he put them together as "cat?"  I used to play a game with my ds at that age.  I would fill a basket full of items whose names had only 2-3 sounds (e.g., pen, dog, bow, ball, book, etc.).  I would say the sounds of one item, separated, and he would have to find it.  It was hard for him at first, but he got better.  And as he got better, he could separate the sounds himself and ask me to find the item.  This is a prerequisite skill to blending for reading.  

 

Another important skill that is prerequisite to blending is associating the visual letter with the sound of the letter.  Most of us taught our children the letter names before the letter sounds, and that causes the child to make an extra mental step when first reading.  He sees the letter C, and first thinks "see," before he thinks of the sound /k/.  If I had known better, I would have taught the letter sounds first, but alas, I didn't learn about this until both of my kids knew their letter names.  To overcome this, we did a lot of flashcard drills and played games with the flashcards.  It only takes about 1 minute to go through the sounds of the whole alphabet.  My kids also loved the Phonogram Relay game, in which we put some phonogram cards up on the other side of the room, and I would tell them to perform some feat to get to a particular phonogram (like hop to the /t/, using the sound and not the letter name).  We brought our cards whenever we had an appointment and would use time in the waiting room to review them or play games with them.  

 

You do not necessarily need a program with more bells and whistles, though I personally prefer a more explicit program.  But you do need to make sure that the basic skills are in place before moving on.  

[bakpak]

I agree with putting the book away and just working on blending skills orally or the other games folks mention above. Blending is its own skill, and a big breakthrough to reading, so it's much more tied to the child being developmentally ready than lots of practice. I'd also stop saying letter names completely, just refer to the letters by their sounds or call it 'the letter that makes the mmmm' sound. I found casually using sentences with blended words extremely helpful at this stage: "Would you like to help me go feed the duh-o-guh?" "Can you point to a p-i-guh?" My DD very quickly understood what I meant and got the concept of blending words (while reading) within a week or two of me doing that orally a little bit around the house.

 

You can also just do lots of practice/examples FOR him without asking him to join in in any way other than just observing. He may just need to absorb the lesson a bit before trying it on his own. You might be surprised, after a few days/week of this, he may decide to join in and show you his stuff! So you might just tell him you're going to practice sounding out words, then do a different word family each day: (at, cat, sat, mat), (it, fit, sit, hit, kit), (log, frog, hog, dog), etc. a few times a week for awhile with not expectations from him other than listening for a minute.

 

Also, in future, you may want to REFER to the OPGTR book before you start your 'lesson', but not use it directly with your child. Write on a dry erase board or chalkboard or use a moveable alphabet or some sort. It's more tactile, and there isn't this whole crazy page of other text that would be distracting and intimidating to a small child. It may also help you not try to keep going till the end of the list/section/page, but instead stop before your child is ready to quit. That's the best rule of thumb for any work with children that age!

 

Remember to keep it fun and light :)

[bakpak]

Also, I found that once my DD got the concept of blending she had the most fun when I'd throw in nonsense or funny words for her to sound out. Silliness is important and I think it helps keep the guessing down once you move on to reading Bob or Nora Gaydos style beginning reader books. This way they're not trying to guess what they word is; the goal is to sound out the letters properly.

[SKL]

My more advanced kid learned several words that she happened to find interesting in her environment, at age 2-3.  Random words like FOX and ICE.  Casually, I would ask her about FOX and then I'd say, if F-O-X spells FOX, how would you spell BOX?  If I-C-E spells ICE, how would you spell rice, mice, nice....  She never did any organized study / curriculum before becoming a fluent reader.  I'm not really sure how she learned to read exactly, but maybe those early spelling challenges started something.

[Tanikit]

I agree that the book needs to be put away for now because it is frustrating him. As for blending - my children appeared to learn that (by age 2) because they heard me do it for them over and over. So instead of asking them to blend I would say: c-a-t and then slide the sounds closer together c-a-t says cat. They said nothing, just listened. Eventually (after about a month or more of me just doing it for them - orally not even with letters around even though they knew their letters - this also meant I could blend words like sh-o-p and oa-k for them - then I would pause before saying the word and often they would say it. Then I went back to words and had them read the letters to me. I had to help still sliding the letters together a bit faster for them initially and then they could do it by themselves in the end. And then and only then did we pull out OPGTR and teach the other sounds.

[boscopup]

Agree with shelving it. It is not worth pushing a child to read early. In fact, with my oldest, I found that when I backed off and stopped trying to teach him, he moved forward faster.

 

My son knew letter sounds at 2 but didn't blend until 4.5. He then took off one day and was reading at a mid-2nd grade level by age 5. My youngest could blend at just turned 3, but he didn't really take off until 4.5 also, so he has ended up at about the same reading level at age 5. :) Middle kid could blend at just turned 4, but he couldn't read much until 7, and he still has to work a lot harder than his 5 year old brother. It happens when it happens.

 

Also, I like Phonics Pathways MUCH better for teaching blending. I wouldn't use it yet though. If your son isn't asking for reading lessons, just read to him - lots of picture books.

[Korrale]

Put the book away.

Check out the free http://www.readingbear.org/ for help with blending. Let him joy himself clicking through a few lessons.

[Black-eyed Suzan]

I agree with shelving it. Many of the great ideas previous posters listed are specific examples of phonemic awareness activities. You can google for more activities and do them orally.

 

My son was older at the time, but he hated both OPGTR and Phonics Pathways. I ended up using the concepts from OPGTR on the white board and in Carol Barnier's Roadblock game. Here's the link:

http://www.westfieldacademy.org/adhd/

[PagesandFields]

You've gotten a ton of great advice but I just wanted to pipe in because I've got the identical kid... :)  When he was 3 1/2 he randomly started blending 3 letter words... so i went out and got a couple different phonics books.  I really didn't want to rush him but in a little while I slowly started with him.  

 

He wasn't interested.  So I offered often to see if he was interested or would make progress...  Nope!  haha!

 

Anyhoo... I've recently started up again with him, because he showed interest again.  We're technically starting K work in 2 days (eek)...  so at that point I'll be more regular about it.  

 

Things I've noticed that help.  (I use OPGTR)

 - I don't ever actually use the book with him.  I do the lessons by writing them on a chalk board, on paper, or with magnets/manipulatives.  

 - As soon as he shows resistance I stop... and I try to stop right before he does...

 - I've stopped using letter names.  The kid has known letter names and sounds for so long (18 months also) that it's almost like he needs to relearn just to use them for sounds.  He loves letters, they are separate little figures that he thinks have identities and are fun... but he knows them so well individually that he needs to relearn them as parts of words...  (does that makes sense)

 - I have had to resist phonics-program-hopping...  I really think that patience and persistence is important... but there are definitely more gamey programs that I've considered for him.  

 

So that's what has worked for me.  I feel the need to kinda push him because he has shown interest, but is a kid who easily gives up if he doesn't already know how to do something... And also because selfishly I think once he knows how to read he will sink into books and be happy with independent reading giving me a chance to do the dishes or other stimulating activities... :)

 

BUT.... I believe they learn to read at different ages for just innate natural reasons...

[AimeeM]

Ah. You speak to my heart :)

My son (barely 5) was almost exactly the same way - to a tee.

He started fumbling right around the blending stage. As per the advice on the board, I simply took a break (but golly, I fought it - after all, why wouldn't my gifted youngster be able to learn to blend when he had mastered everything else so easily!). Seriously - blending is so much more than just knowing his letter sounds.

 

I would either, A) break for a bit, read to him, and try again in a month or two, or B) try a more "fun" program - we are using PAL Reading. Overall, expect some ups and downs.

[MotherOfBoys]

My son didn't do well with blending either and a friend of mine suggested saying "smash the word" instead. It worked. He didn't know what blend meant. Simple fix. If that doesn't work shelve it and work on blending words to him orally till he picks it up.

[ElizabethB]

Both my children could spell before they could blend. They both knew their letter sounds for years before they could blend. My daughter learned to blend earlier than my son. Work on spelling and model blending while waiting for blending to click.

 

Here is how and why you should teach sight words phonetically, there are actually rules for all but 5 of the 220 Dolch sight words and many are completely phonetic without rules:

 

http://www.thephonicspage.org/On%20Reading/sightwords.html

[lewelma]

Wait, let me get this straight. 24 people on the WTM actually agreed on something?!?!  Oh wait, make that 25.  Shelve it.

 

Ruth in NZ

[PagesandFields]

I thought of this thread today.  We started our sort-of-K year today.  I'd shelved EVERYTHING for a bit of a summer break...  I literally have done no phonics at all with him for maybe 4-6 weeks...  

 

Anyway - today we picked up OPGTR right where we left off and I think the break was good for him.  He was completely into it and started blending... I just thought that might be reassuring to you or help in some way.  

 

 

[Guest jnetc]

Sorry, I'm hijacking this post a bit, but just curious about opinions... Our almost 3 year old has known his letters & sounds for almost a year, but had sort of been in "blending limbo" for a few months. He could say each of the sounds individually and could blend them if I repeated the sounds he just said back to him, but couldn't quite get that last piece of holding the previous sounds in his mind as he said the next sound. After a little while, he stopped asking to read so we shelved it and came back to it a couple days ago when he saw the Bob books on the bookcase and asked to read them. Turns out the last few months, whatever needed to click clicked. He's now reading pretty much all CVC words easily and flying through the first set of Bob books. I guess what I'm wondering is, for an almost 3 year old, how much do you explicitly teach systematically using something like OPGTR vs. just showing them the rules as they come up in primer-type books like the Bob books? His enthusiasm is for the books (he's always asking for a new one since he wants to "read the story" and "find out what happens") and given his age, I'm pretty happy to just follow his enthusiasm, so I'm leaning towards just going the Bob book route, but just curious what others' thoughts were...

[kiana]

Original I see sam reading books are phonics-based and available free online. They may appeal to his love of books. http://www.marriottmd.com/sam/

[genny]

My 3rd child knew letter sounds from a very early age.  When she turned 3 I figured I would try blending with her.  Although she had all her letter sounds down pat, she just couldn't make the jump to blending.  I left it alone for approx. 6 months.  She now is ready and gets the blending idea.  I've used readingbear.org, starfall and she's now started readingeggs.com.  I find with my kids that if they don't get something, the best thing has been to set it aside for a while and come back later.