Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Age or Ability Specific Forums Pre-school teaching reading early

DS in showing signs of boredom, I am showing signs of loosing it, and he's asking about reading.

Recently I wrote something out in my multialphabeticly idiosyncratic longhand and put it up on his wall (I'm memorizing it for a performance, good way to remember to recite it regularly). DH joked "don't learn to read from THAT." And next you knew we were talking about what to do about DS's wanting to learn to read.

He's not ready to actually read; I didn't until I had spec ed in grade 2 and the apple may not fall far from this tree (his dad read at early 2, but he seems to be more on my path with this one). His interest is also a bit atypical: so far, from his questioning we've had impromptu lessons on topics such as "word boundaries," "place value," and "periods/commas." (writing of numbers seems to be a particular curiosity)

We're thinking of posting alphabets/numerals in his room, maybe English, Old English, Hebrew, maybe a sylabary.... We're thinking of doing groupings of letters with varous fonts and handwritten forms. Basically, we think he might be interested in working out the boundaries of things like "what's an 'a'?" "What's a letter/number?"

Anyone have any suggestions about either some kind of reading curriculum that proceeds this way, and might give us some ideas, or about other kids with these kinds of interests? Other kids with an interest in reading that overshoots the real abilily to sit down and learn methodically? I'm not 100% sure I can still see the questions on this track. It took me a long time, for eg, to sort out that he was asking me about word boundaries & hadn't a sence of it in either speech or text.

Thanks guys!
-Mich

Hi Mich
I found starfall.com really awesome for this kind of thing - not for the punctuation per se but the techniques of reading and syllables, vowels, the rules and things were done well. plus it was in small digestible clumps so you easily do a big batch or just a little and go back and do some more. Also, DS really liked those 2 piece puzzles where you have a picture on one side and the wording the other or other forms of matching pairs. There was other stuff too which I am just blanking on, but DS was both an early reader and very interested in the how and why of language, I'll post again if I can remember, I really wish I had written more stuff down! And it's was only 3-4 years ago!!

DeHe
Ps really like the idea of the different fonts, DS was always really interested in signs.

If you can tolerate a noisyish toy, the Leapfrog letter and word fridge magnets are a pretty fun way to learn.

There's a book called The Ordinary Parent's Guide to Teaching Reading, though I have only glanced at it.

If you do TV, Word World and Super Why.

We played games with magnetic refrigerator letters - we had lots of sets, so running out of the letters we wanted wasn't an issue. We started with word families and letter-sound correspondences, and played around with single words, mostly, although it was also great for introducing the concept of compound words, since it was easy to just slide them together to make a word, and then slide them apart to make two again. Later in the process we would leave messages for each other on the refrigerator many times a day. The key to making this tons of fun for my son was the fact the we would take turns arranging the letters, so he got to make up words for me to pronounce. His favorite thing was to put together long strings of consonants with very few vowels and listen to me try to hum and snort and spit my way through them. ( I always made my performance as ridiculous as possible...) Your son, like mine, might be really interested in the different permutations you can create from a single simple base by changing the initial letter only, or the middle letter(s) only, or the final letter only.

If you child is interested in and confused by word boundaries, make sure that you are speaking and reading slowly enough to make an audible break between words and are following under the text with your finger when you read with him, so he can see how the words have spaces between on the page and in speech. Not being able to distinguish the boundaries between words in speech and text makes me think about consulting with an audiologist and a speech-language pathologist, just to be sure that there aren't any subtle issues with hearing or language processing going on - I say that from the "better-safe-than-sorry" perspective of someone who wishes that she had not listened to people who told me that the seemingly minor issues I saw in my son (who was later diagnosed with multiple deficits, in addition to profound intellectual strengths) were probably nothing to worry about.

ETA: If you do TV, "Between the Lions" is awesome...

Dd started to learn to read before age 2. She was a teeny tiny thing and dh started amusing her with words to keep her entertained in her high chair, in hopes she might tolerate staying longer and eating a little more. It started with looking at the writing on the Cheerios box, evolved to writing 3-letter words in large letters on the Cheerios box, and then to 3x5 note cards. They had progressed to "through", "though", and "thought" before she was out of the high chair.

Also, when not in the high chair, she used to haul around a DK alphabet book - it was almost as big as her. Shortly after her second birthday, she could read enough to be a back seat driver - "NO PARKING, Daddy."

At 12yo, she is still in love with the printed word. (And she grew - now 5'3"!!)

He's ok, we had a long run-in with an SLP when he was younger, and the word-boundary issue has to do with having a vocabulary with lots of compound words, and a tendancy not to assume. His inate sence was to take the language in morphographs rather than words. Which is fine with me.

I'm looking for stuff that *isn't* the usual letter-by-letter approach. I don't need him to be actually able to read, and I don't think he's ready for that anyway. I'm interested in ideas about taking reading from a more wholistic, theoretical perspective. So that each piece of the puzzle stands alone, otherwise, it's a long haul before he gets anything out of learning, since the texts he's interested in are generally in the 9+ section. And this is for fun, not for groundwork.

The word boundaries thing was great, because it was something he could pick up in a few minutes and apply, it's not as simple as it seems on first glance (contractions, compound words, set phrases, etc.), and we could talk about how other languages use other ways of marking off words, different ideas about what a word is.

Now I'm thinking about talking about morphology with him. That might be a good thing. Hmmmmm...

Ok, you guys are giving me ideas, even if I wasn't actually clear about my questions .

-Mich.

Oddly, this sounds to me like you are more interested in teaching language and rhetoric not reading, if that makes sense. Not that it matters but makes me think differently about recommendations - like making your own language - or talking about roots and things. DS and i just had a fun discussion of di meaning two as we discussed carbon dioxide and nitrogen oxide (which of course produced fascinating looks as we waited for an elevator).

Also there are some great picture books that take a higher level look at things like punctuation and grammar rules, DS loved them around 3-4. Loreen Leedy has some nice ones.

If this isn't what you are thinking, just ignore!!

DeHe

hmmm... he's the one who's asking to learn to read, I'm the one who's sayin' he ain't got the discipline

So... you might be right...

-Mich

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rebus
?
and if he likes that - then these might help him learn to draw the pictures.

http://www.edemberley.com/pages/main.aspx?section=db&subSection=dwmPages

or they might be a good stand alone to teach 'right to left' and following a procedure and analyzing part to whole relationships.
g

Just sent u a link. Seems like Super Why was a huge hit at that age. They take sentences & change them to change their meaning. For example The Big Bad Wolf they change the words big and bad to make him a small nice wolf. Turns out he's mean because he's never had anybody to play with. He likes being nice, but he'd prefer to be big. So they change the right word in the sentence- now he's the big nice wolf.

My boy was apparently just picking up sight words (like his dad's name) at that age and not sounding anything out, although I was teaching him letter sounds and sounding out to get him ready for phonics. We were using hooked on phonics word families where you use a deck of alphabet cards and write cat, say "now give me the c and put this r there and and sound out r-at". Teaching gifted kids schooly-style doesn't seem to be the recommended best practice, but I wanted him to learn how to learn the style that most people are likely to teach more than I wanted to let him learn how to read. I thought by teaching him how to follow lessons he can learn whatever he wants in a minute. I might have over thought it somewhat.

Ps, that pic on that page was my boy content and exhausted. We bought that shirt at Six Flags and that was at the end of a long day at the amusement park.