Literacy Ideas

When we first got Chelsea's diagnosis, the professionals told me to not get my hopes for literacy up for Chelsea; she will never be able to read. Well, we started on a journey to prove them wrong! Just this month, Chelsea has started identifying sight words, and here are some of the tips we came up with that helped her!

1. Do sight words that are meaningful!!!! If you try and teach the word "am" or "are"- what motivates a child to learn it? Yes, they are high frequency words, but we need some exciting wins to increase motivation! Words like "Minnie Mouse" or "Jasmine" or "Mommy"!

2. Start with nouns your child LOVES, then move on to motivating verbs! Chelsea loves to jump, so we taught her "jumps", and put it in little phrases: "Mommy jumps" and "Chelsea jumps" and "Minnie Mouse jumps".

Remember: this is not only teaching sight words, it gives practice for speaking, it teaches that words have meaning "Oh, I can make Mommy jump if I put these words together", and it is exciting! Your child can make things happen! Kids LOVE having "power".

3. Make it SILLY and FUN!!!! If each reading lesson is dreaded, your child will learn to hate reading. But if you and your child both enjoy that time, reading will come because it is a highly motivating goal! Make "yummy" and "yucky" cards, and then eat yummy and yucky things and make silly faces! Plus I LOVE Leslie Patricelli's book "Yummy Yucky"