I cannot count the number of times parents have asked me what I recommend they do to prep their child for school/ learning to read. (Clarification: this advice intended for most kids ages 3-5)
The most common questions:
1. What program should I use to help my child learn to read?
2. What curriculum is most effective at teaching my child how to write?
3. What apps teach the alphabet/ numbers best?
And inevitably after I give my honest answer, people don't like my feedback and think I am a quack (maybe it is true). Parents tend to want answers like "If you do _______ program 15 minutes daily, your child is guaranteed to read by kindergarten!" or "The _____ curriculum is the best."
When I tell them is:
1. Read to your child. Out loud and with enthusiasm for at LEAST half an hour a day, every day.
2. Ditch the screens and go outside every day.
3. Play with playdough, do scooters, and color with broken crayons
The Response I Always Get Back:
"Okay, yeah we can do that stuff too, but I mean- what REAL academic work should we do? I want my child to learn to read and write early to give them a head start!" to which I say- Don't make your child hate school before they even start.
How to Teach A Child to HATE School:
Step 1: Force a young child to sit and do boring seat work (usually a lot of worksheets, tracing, dull books that are high on words like "is" and "were" type of sight words)
Step 2: When child starts squirming, you take away recess/ free play/ outside time until they are finished their work
Step 3: Dissect each story when you read to your child
Step 4: Stop reading to your child once they know how, or always make them read to you
My Reasoning
Let's break these down, and I will explain why I don't automatically answer with the name of a curriculum/ app, even though there are awesome ones out there!
Teaching reading- Your child could learn to decode words better than anyone else in the world, but if they don't get any pleasure out of reading, they won't do it and will learn to avoid it, which further reinforces the false idea that reading is not for them. What they need is to see YOU reading, hear you reading aloud, and having a plethora of books available all the time. Fall in love with reading books at your house. Real, tangible, paper books!
The entire goal here is not to have a child that learns to read faster than anyone else. The goal is for them to love reading. If they love it, they will continue. Remember: it took me YEARS to teach my older daughter with a moderate-severe Intellectual Disability to read. BUT- she reads and she LOVES it.
For a whole different blog about Literacy, (specifically Disabilities and Literacy as well as Boys and Literacy) see HERE and if you really, desperately want to know what program we learned once we started teaching our older daughter "sight words" I wrote about it HERE
Also, I said to not dissect stories. What I mean by that is to just read the story enthusiastically and don't stop to point out every. single. sight. word. Just let your child get lost in the magic of the story. Doing so will allow your child to want to read more!
Teaching Writing- This has been a very hot topic lately. What most parents do is decide they want to teach their child to write, sit down with them, stick a pencil in their child's hand, and help them trace their name. Usually great results- kids are excited that they can create their name, and it feels powerful!
BUT- please remember that small hands are not adult hands. They don't have the muscles to really control a pencil, and need to build up that hand strength first. That is where scooters and playdough come in.
Play with playdough- hide toys in it, squish it, poke it, all those things. BECAUSE it is a fun way to build up that hand strength that will give the child time to develop those muscles. Same thing with floor scooters. When little kids lay on their bellies on a scooter and use their hands to pull themselves along, that not only helps their hand muscles, but their wrist, shoulder, and trunk muscles as well, which are ALL needed for good handwriting!
Finally, when you do have your child color (please let them color!), use big fat markers, or else broken crayons with the papers peeled off. Broken crayons force people to use the correct pencil grip. Or the triangular crayons!
Limit Screens- I could go on and on about screens and the detrimental effect they have on developing brains. So many studies are out there listing how awful extended screen time is for developing brains, and it is no secret that we are pretty heavily anti-screen around our house, so I will limit myself to say:
- Limit screens to half an hour of tablet time plus a one hour show/ movie each day. That is IT!!!
- No, educational apps don't get a pass on screen time.
- Yes, I know how very handy screens can be! I try to save our family's screen time for the time I am prepping dinner because I need a break about then.
Get me on this soapbox and I may never stop. My favorite books on this topic:
- Glow Kids
- The Collapse of Parenting
- Boys Adrift
That's All Folks!:
That's basically it for now! What are YOUR thoughts? Agree? Disagree?
