What to do with a 4yo who teaches herself to read?

[athena1277]

Littlest dd turned 4 in April.  She’s always loved books, letters, and writing.  I taught her the letters and sounds when she was interested, but I don’t push formal learning until K.  Somehow in the last month or so she has learned how to read.  She can read some really big words, but she sometimes doesn’t know easier words.  I bought the Explode the Code preK books so she could “do school” like the older kids when she wants, but now I’m wondering if I should get out OPGTTR and start that with her.  Or should I just wait until K?  She could almost start K this year, but I don’t think she’s fully ready and I don’t want to push her too hard at a young age.

Any advice?  I know some kids read early, but I don’t know what to do now.

[Guest]

I had the experience of having a kid who read before she could walk, and who could read almost anything by kindergarten. It’s more than a little scary and surreal to realize that they have learned to read without any instruction on your part. 
 

Provide lots of picture books (Usually have a richer vocabulary) and appropriate level materials (my daughter loved the Dear Dragon books as a early reader), try to keep them from material that is too mature or scary (billboards and captions on news were problems here) and hold on tight. One thing we found was that print size was an issue, and illustrations were still needed. Keep reading aloud (we still read aloud daily, and DD is a senior in high school). 

[prairiewindmomma]

I agree!

Once they start reading on their own, they just do, so surround her with quality appropriate materials. 

We had a similar experience with news piece captions with our Youngest. (We started watching the news later online as a work around, fwiw.)

It's a common enough problem that children can sound out long words phonetically but may not be able to read smaller ones.  I do recommend a quick run-through OPGTR if you have it at hand. Likewise, there may not be full comprehension of the storyline, inference of character motives, etc.  The act of physically reading can be separate from emotional comprehension. 

FWIW, several years down the road, do put her in front of more complex and dense novels.  Novels are no longer as rich and complex as they used to be, and you may find that older books can offer reading complexity without additional thematic maturity. 

[knittingout]

My oldest did that when she was 4.  I had never done any formal instruction on reading at all with her. I did do some things like reading nonsense words to see if she really understood phonics and she did.  It was quite odd, I am dyslexic and had been researching reading curriculum from the time I was pregnant with her and then didn't' use any of it at all.   I mainly got out of her way.  I did try to help her find books that I thought were just above her reading level.  We did lots a lots of nonfiction reading because a lot of the fiction get in to relationships and other things that aren't really developmentally on point for a 4 or 5 year old.   Mine is 11 now and still reads everything. 

[Guest]

Oh, and note down the interesting things they say :). There are likely to be some funny ones. 

https://forums.welltrainedmind.com/topic/264431-they-said-what-good-thing-theyre-homeschooled/?do=findComment&comment=2677751

 

[kbutton]

You could teach phonics via spelling if she seems to have phonics down well enough to read. 

[Little Green Leaves]

3 hours ago, dmmetler said:

I had the experience of having a kid who read before she could walk, and who could read almost anything by kindergarten. It’s more than a little scary and surreal to realize that they have learned to read without any instruction on your part. 
 

Provide lots of picture books (Usually have a richer vocabulary) and appropriate level materials (my daughter loved the Dear Dragon books as a early reader), try to keep them from material that is too mature or scary (billboards and captions on news were problems here) and hold on tight. One thing we found was that print size was an issue, and illustrations were still needed. Keep reading aloud (we still read aloud daily, and DD is a senior in high school). 

Yes, we definitely had this issue-- I remember struggling to keep scary material away from my kids' eyes. Both of then learned to read by 4 and once they could read, they couldn't stop. They are both anxious kids as it is, and of course they didn't know how to filter anything themselves. They both really, really benefitted from lots of gentle read aloud books.

Sorry, that sounded so negative! I love reading and it was also very wonderful when the kids started to read. This thread just reminded me of some of the downsides!

[mom2scouts]

Your biggest difficulty may be finding age appropriate reading material at your child's reading level. By age 6, my son was mostly interested in books from the adult section of the library, so that took a lot of work to find books with nice animal stories or other age appropriate stories.

[Momto6inIN]

15 hours ago, dmmetler said:

Oh, and note down the interesting things they say :). There are likely to be some funny ones. 

https://forums.welltrainedmind.com/topic/264431-they-said-what-good-thing-theyre-homeschooled/?do=findComment&comment=2677751

 

Not an early reader, but at age 4 we were at Faith Community Center and they had their initials F.C.C. on all the trash cans and DD cheeefully and loudly sounded it out 🤣