Teaching 4/5 Yr Old To Read!!

[fralala]

My daughter's Kindergarten teacher has sent home a class-wide request that if your child cannot tie their own shoes, please have them wear velcro shoes. There is not enough time for the teacher to be tying everyone's shoes.  So that I understand. You can buy velcro shoes as cheaply as tie around here.

 

Here I will insert the obligatory I remember when kindergarten WAS learning to tie your shoes comment.

[ReadingMama1214]

My daughter's Kindergarten teacher has sent home a class-wide request that if your child cannot tie their own shoes, please have them wear velcro shoes. There is not enough time for the teacher to be tying everyone's shoes. So that I understand. You can buy velcro shoes as cheaply as tie around here.

I haven't even come across tie in my daughters size. She's barely a 10. The majority of shoes her size are Velcro. I have to teach her to tie on my shoes 😂

[luuknam]

Here I will insert the obligatory I remember when kindergarten WAS learning to tie your shoes comment.

 

 

Yep. I got a shoe-tying diploma from my kindergarten. We didn't do kindergarten graduations and stuff like that, but at least we had the shoe-tying diploma!

[barnwife]

I remember practicing tying shoes...in kindergarten. We practiced on a pretend wooden shoe. Even as a kid, I wondered why they didn't just buy an actual shoe. Why did it need to be fake?

[HomeAgain]

I will say this - public school kindergarten reading skills are different than homeschool reading skills.  Usually they want the child to know how to "read" the first 10 Dolch words and their name within the first few months of K.  This is not reading.  This is word-shape recognition.  I won't even call it sight reading because offer letters in the same general shape and the child will still say the word they have been taught to associate it with.  It's a lot of memorization and using the "reading skills checklist" :

Does it make sense in the story? 

Does it match the picture?

Does it start with the right letter?

 

Homeschool reading is usually much more phonics based.  There isn't the need to have instant goals, so the kids learn phonics and putting them together slowly at first, and then end up reading at their own pace.  The public schooled kids study both phonics and sight words as they go along, so everyone is reading okay by about 2nd grade, but the standards are slightly out of whack when you look at what the child is actually doing: memorizing or learning how to connect sounds.  If your school is expecting memorized word shapes, it's not something I would give the slightest concern about.

[HippieMom]

I would still try to reach out to them and see if any of those people live closer in your direction and would be willing to meet up once. Some people might be driving e.g. 30 minutes north/south for those groups, so might be only 30 min from you. I wouldn't necessarily sign up for a weekly activity an hour from home (then and again, knowing myself, there's a decent chance I would if I were in your shoes, not necessarily long term, but maybe for one semester, but I don't know what your financial and transportation situations are etc). 

 

So, since you're saying you're going to homeschool, you should unenroll her from school. I don't know anything about TN homeschool laws, so I don't know if you need to file a letter of intent or anything, but if you don't unenroll her I'd imagine the school will consider her to be truant come fall. If things happen last minute, you can always enroll her again in August or whenever - they're a public school, they have to take her (unless K is not required, I guess - but they can still consider her to be truant even if K is not required - I had a crazy principal in TX tell me that they'd changed the student handbook the summer before my 3yo started attending PreK (after he'd met the kid when we toured the place), and his hair needed to be above the collar, and if we didn't cut his hair, he'd give the autistic 3yo an in-school suspension, and that if this happened a number of times the kid would be considered truant - I said something about PreK not even being required, so how can a 3yo be truant, and he said that if we enrolled the kid then it was required - it was batshit crazy, but there you go... incidentally, the PreK teacher was great, but the principal...).

Wow! That sounds like a nightmare! lol

I was told by the woman at the school board to wait until school almost starts before doing that so if something DOES happen, she still has a spot. She said it wouldn't be an issue to unenroll her thou. :)

[HippieMom]

My daughter's Kindergarten teacher has sent home a class-wide request that if your child cannot tie their own shoes, please have them wear velcro shoes. There is not enough time for the teacher to be tying everyone's shoes.  So that I understand. You can buy velcro shoes as cheaply as tie around here.

I understand that. But I also think as teachers if they still have a few issues with grasping the concept of tying shoes, the teachers should help them learn how. Not be fully responsible, but helping a child that is struggling might be what that kid needs. Maybe their parents aren't taking time to teach them... they should be able to get help somewhere. I worked in a preschool before and I cannot tell you how many shoes I tied in a day! lol ;) If they needed help, I tried to show them. Some of those kids had no help besides what I did during the day but that was my job. To educate them. To be there for them. :) Just another point of view. I can see an argument for both cases, though.

[HippieMom]

We live in the Western New York area and my youngest currently attends our local UPK (Universal Pre Kindergarten).  By the END of PreK (so, entering Kindergarten) they want them to know how to write the letters and their names (although as of January most of the names were still illegible on a card that came home that all the children had signed), to be able to recognize their letters (upper and lower), to know the sounds the letters make, number concepts to 10 (counting, simple adding), and a list of other age appropriate things..rhyming, shapes, colors, etc..  Perhaps things differ drastically around the country but here there certainly is no expectation of reading entering Kindergarten.  My niece is currently in Kindergarten and my sister said that by the middle of the year they like to them to be reading simple books...but not at the beginningn.

I still don't remember ANY reading until first grade! lol And most people I talk to say the same thing! Kindergarten was fun and more simple than reading and math... I think they just put too much on small children these days.

[HippieMom]

Here I will insert the obligatory I remember when kindergarten WAS learning to tie your shoes comment.

Exactly!  :iagree:  :laugh:

On my old kindergarten report card it states how well I could tie shoes by the end of the year! 

[HippieMom]

I haven't even come across tie in my daughters size. She's barely a 10. The majority of shoes her size are Velcro. I have to teach her to tie on my shoes 😂

The majority here are, too. ;) My kids have had a few pairs, though. Their Nikes (I got from a friend) had shoelaces. My kids are just better with velcro right now, but I still feel the kindergarten teachers should help teach tying shoes or at least not BAN them until they are masters! lol

[HippieMom]

I will say this - public school kindergarten reading skills are different than homeschool reading skills.  Usually they want the child to know how to "read" the first 10 Dolch words and their name within the first few months of K.  This is not reading.  This is word-shape recognition.  I won't even call it sight reading because offer letters in the same general shape and the child will still say the word they have been taught to associate it with.  It's a lot of memorization and using the "reading skills checklist" :

Does it make sense in the story? 

Does it match the picture?

Does it start with the right letter?

 

Homeschool reading is usually much more phonics based.  There isn't the need to have instant goals, so the kids learn phonics and putting them together slowly at first, and then end up reading at their own pace.  The public schooled kids study both phonics and sight words as they go along, so everyone is reading okay by about 2nd grade, but the standards are slightly out of whack when you look at what the child is actually doing: memorizing or learning how to connect sounds.  If your school is expecting memorized word shapes, it's not something I would give the slightest concern about.

Never thought about it that way! I have noticed a lot of kids can recognize "bed" very fast but "BED" is sometimes harder. It is more of remembering the shape, which isn't really learning to read at all. They need to know WHY it says "bed". 

[HippieMom]

And thank you to the other replies I didn't quote, once again! ;) <3 

[ElizabethB]

I will say this - public school kindergarten reading skills are different than homeschool reading skills.  Usually they want the child to know how to "read" the first 10 Dolch words and their name within the first few months of K.  This is not reading.  This is word-shape recognition.  I won't even call it sight reading because offer letters in the same general shape and the child will still say the word they have been taught to associate it with.  It's a lot of memorization and using the "reading skills checklist" :

Does it make sense in the story? 

Does it match the picture?

Does it start with the right letter?

 

Homeschool reading is usually much more phonics based.  There isn't the need to have instant goals, so the kids learn phonics and putting them together slowly at first, and then end up reading at their own pace.  The public schooled kids study both phonics and sight words as they go along, so everyone is reading okay by about 2nd grade, but the standards are slightly out of whack when you look at what the child is actually doing: memorizing or learning how to connect sounds.  If your school is expecting memorized word shapes, it's not something I would give the slightest concern about.

 

This.  

 

Also, I have been a volunteer remedial reading tutor for 23 years.  The public schools with sight word lists produce a lot more failures percentage wise than homeschoolers who primarily use phonics with few sight words.  So, you actually have a much higher chance of doing better just by choosing a good phonics program and not teaching sight words as wholes!!  I like Phonics Pathways, Word Mastery (free online from Don Potter!) and Ordinary Parents guide to reading.  

 

Here is how and why to teach the Dolch sight words with phonics:

 

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

 

It takes a bit longer up front but produces a much better reader in the long run and a lot less failures when you teach it all with phonics.  I also have some YouTube videos that are good for learning how to teach phonics and pre-reading skills:

 

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLJLxBWdK_5l3aBN-qowg2u8BdGYM64pTi

 

 

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLJLxBWdK_5l0Z941Cy1INrADEO9Sy4ZWz

Edited April 4, 2017 by ElizabethB

[ElizabethB]

Here I will insert the obligatory I remember when kindergarten WAS learning to tie your shoes comment.

 

I napped, learned to tie my shoes, and did 10 - 15 minutes a day of phonics with the I See Sam readers!! (I was in K in the mid 1970's.)  I think it was half of a day, too, I don't remember. We got a lot of recess and finger painting and such things, too.

[ReadingMama1214]

I napped, learned to tie my shoes, and did 10 - 15 minutes a day of phonics with the I See Sam readers!! (I was in K in the mid 1970's.)  I think it was half of a day, too, I don't remember. We got a lot of recess and finger painting and such things, too.

 

This is how my K was and it was in the mid 90s. I do remember learning to tie my shoes in PreK. The teacher told me to wait a minute and I got impatient and did it myself. I was also reading in PreK too. But I loved K. It seemed magical to me. But it was only half day and play based. We may have done phonics? My main memories of kindergarten were taking home the class teddybear for a week and playing with counting manipulative.