Halloween always provides so many fun opportunities for themed activities, but finding challenging but appropriate things for my little guy is always a bit tricky. He can read pretty well, but still has a short attention span and the fine motor skills of his age. Since he likes roll and covers, I decided to try making one with word families instead of numbers.
I made two levels of difficulty, one with very different word families and one with much more similar ones. I made printable dice, but chose to use a dry erase one instead (Dollar Tree). I used little witches hats but you could use erasers, pom poms or anything else you wanted.
A couple of weeks ago, my mom asked for a video of Archer reading. While he can read a lot of words and often reads sentences/pages of books with us, it isn't always easy to catch on camera. Here is what we ended up getting. Warning, my nine year old was the cameraman.
He is reading Just One More by Jennifer Hansen Rolli. It is definitely not the most challenging book for him, but he loves it, it has big, easy to read font and not too many words per page (he tends to skip down lines in there are too many lines in a paragraph).
Way back when Xander was a toddler, I did a 1500 Book Reading Challenge. The idea was to read 1500 books with him over the course of the year. I thought it was a fun and beneficial challenge (research suggests reading to kids improves their brain development, vocabulary and academic success). 1500 books means a LOT of exposure to words, books and cuddle time! I made the challenge just that much harder for myself by choosing to do 1500 unique books (so reading the same ones again and again didn't count towards the goal). It works out to slightly over 4 new books a day, so we made lots of trips to the library!
I have decided 2020 is the time to do the challenge with Archer! I'd love for others to join along (#1500BookChallenge)! If you just want to read 1500 books, I think a tally would probably be the easiest way to keep track. However, if you want to do unique books, I made a spreadsheet where I can write the books we read each week and it will count them. You're welcome to copy this template (Google Sheets) to keep track for your little one.
With Xander, I updated periodically with some of our favorite book finds, so will probably do something similar this go round. I'm open to suggestions as to whether it should be on the blog or somewhere on social media.
Lately, Archer has been a little obsessed with apples. He wants to eat them constantly and loves pointing them out. He also LOVES sight words. I find this really funny, because Xander hated them. He didn't like the sight words DVDs and he liked to read books but would skip all the little sight words, going straight to all the "interesting" words in a sentence.
I'm trying to embrace Archer's interests, so I made him some apples and leaves with sight words on them. I used 36 of the Pre-K Dolch Words.
I printed each page on its own color and laminated them. For an older kid, you could easily print two copies of each and play matching or memory games.
While he recognizes a lot of words, he has trouble finding them if you give him too many options at once. I started out by giving him six of the apples, with the idea of having him put them into the tractor wagon. He didn't really want to do that, but he did have fun pointing to each one as I asked him to find it. Using only six also made the game go quickly, to suit his 16 month attention span. We will play this game with other apples throughout the fall.
I'm currently working on teaching my second baby to read. I recently posted about how he has shown he can read some words and have gotten some questions about what exactly we have done. I thought it might be helpful to share what has worked for our family.
I have taken a three part approach, but all parts follow the same essential philosophy. I came across it originally in How To Teach Your Baby To Read by Glenn Doman, but have read about similar approaches from Shichida and Right Brain Kids. He advocates a method that has been working for decades. The idea is to teach the baby whole words at a time, very quickly and cheerfully, allowing their "right" brain to learn them. There is no active thinking or phonics involved. Lessons should be FAST and FUN. Quizzing, testing and over-practice are discouraged. You definitely don't want to bore your baby or make them feel like it is work to learn.
*Note: while I taught Xander this whole word approach, he was able to read words I didn't teach him also. Eventually, he had enough words in his arsenal that he just kind of figured out phonics and decoding on his own. When he was a little older, we did go over phonics when we started spelling. He also enjoyed the Leap Frog phonics movies.
Part 1: Flashcards
I did not use the huge flashcards with red marker that Doman advocates, but instead printed words onto cardstock. Keep in mind that words should be big, since little eyes are still maturing.
We started at about five and a half months doing one set of English words, three times a day. (Technically, I also did one set of Spanish words three times a day, but we dropped it by the time he was one, because he just did not enjoy it and I am not going to force him). Each set had 5 words. The first set we did 5 days. After that, we took one word out and added a new one every day, so he would see every word 3X a day 5 days (15 times total). I would sit him across from me, show him the word and say it clearly and happily. Then I'd repeat with the other four words. I would go as quickly as possible while still being clear. Ideally, we would have done this every day, but we did them most days a week, taking a break for holidays or illnesses.
The easiest way I found to organize this was to use a file folder. Each day I crossed off the word I took out and wrote the word I added. New words were kept in one hanging folder and old words got put into another.
We phased these out right around Archer's first birthday. He was losing interest and not wanting to be still. He also much prefers doing lessons on Little Reader.
Part 2: Little Reader
I started doing Little Reader with Archer at around maybe six month-ish? I started with just Spanish, added in English, and ultimately dropped the Spanish, based on his interests. The program comes with a pre-set curriculum that is intended to be done twice a day. We only did one lesson a day, usually skipping the pictures (Archer didn't like them) and definitely skipping the word-split and game (word-split is kind of against the whole word idea). I also usually turn off the photo pronunciation and video. It goes much faster if I say the word for the photo and skip the video. Each lesson takes maybe 3 minutes.
At 14.5 months, we are still doing Little Reader once a day or so. We do picture flash now, because he enjoys it. After we do one of the pre-set curriculum lessons, Archer always signs more, so I do some categories of words with him. He likes these and the lessons I made when Xander was little much better. You can download any of the categories I made for free here. Below is a video of what one of these category lessons looks like.
We will usually do a few different ones and he still usually cries when I cut him off. Gotta love a kid that loves words!
Part 3: Movies
Both boys have LOVED Your Baby Can Read DVDs. We started around six month-ish with Archer. We progressed through levels 1-4 at about a DVD a month, but spent a little longer on DVD 5, because it is a review of all the others. Recently, we have started him on Your Child Can Read, which he also loves.
I made the huge investment to buy him Tweedlewink DVDS, but he doesn't like them at all. Maybe someday?? He watches an average of one movie, several days a week, rotating between YBCR, Meet the Sight Words (the first one is free on YouTube), Sparkabilities (now they are free on YouTube), and Your Baby Can Discover. I don't know that any of the reading movies would be enough, in and of themselves, to teach him to read, but they definitely help with the words that are in them. Plus, they let me cook dinner!
Less Formal Activities
Everything I have described is my organized approach to teaching Archer to read. However, we also read tons of books, pointing to the words as we read. I also have lots of books around for him to browse on his own. I try to have some books with large, easy to read words. We also have sight words readers and the early readers I made.
Please don't take what we have done as a strict outline. Every baby and every family are different. However, every baby is also capable of learning amazing things! Whatever you try to teach your baby, as long as it is done cheerfully and without pressure, will result in some sort of learning!
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Ok, I should back up a bit. I've posted several times about teaching Xander to read as a baby and why I decided to repeat the process with Archer. Since babies can't actually talk, point or match, and any attempts at quizzing are discouraged, I had to go into it with some faith that what I was doing would be worth it. Luckily, I already knew it could work when I embarked on the journey with Archer. That isn't to say that there weren't times when I wondered if he would learn to read as easily or love it as much. Every child is so different.
Anyway, on Wednesday, Archer brought me his Your Baby Can Read flashcards. He has always loved them and likes me to show them ALL to him. As we were going through, I got to the one that said "car" and without any hinting or prompting on my part, Archer said "car." I clapped and cheered and we moved on. Later that night we did all the flashcards again so I could both verify that he truly knew it and so my husband could see. He did it again! He can read the word "car." Since then, he has also consistently said "star" correctly when we have had out other word cards.
Yes, I know it is only a couple of word, but it is a couple of words I know my baby can read! I'm pretty sure there are other words he can read, because he will sometimes see words and try to say them. However, since "car" is one of the few words he can say clearly, it was the first time I could know for sure.
Obviously, we have a long way to go before he'll be reading Llama Llama or Harry Potter on his own, but for now, I will rejoice in all the small achievements! That's part of my job as his mama!
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Archer LOVES his Your Baby Can Read flashcards! He knows where we keep them and will randomly bring me a set. When we finish, he will go back to the bin and bring me another until we've done them all at least once.
I'm currently reading The Book Whisperer (which I am reading for my 12 in 2014 and absolutely love) and it has had me thinking of even more ways to encourage Xander to read. Granted, I'm very lucky. He LOVES books. He's the kind of kid who sneaks books into bed to read during nap time. However, it is a behavior I want to continue to encourage and support. Therefore, I decided to do a summer reading chart.
Now my school year starts back up again at the very end of July, so this is really more of a June and July thing, but I called it "summer" reading anyway. I decided not to set a minimum goal for him. I made a 100 table and we're going to see how many we can fill out by the time I go back to work full time. For every book he reads to me or with me (although he rarely reads less than half of whatever book we're reading to me), I'll let him mark a number. He could circle the number, put a sticker there, or use a Do-a-Dot marker. I want him to go in order, so we can see him accumulate books. Since we'll look at the chart daily, it will be a perfect way to reinforce counting by tens, place values, or odd and even numbers (I'm totally a believer in frequent gentle exposure as a fun way for kids to learn something without even trying). If we fill out multiple charts, it will let us talk about how 200 is actually two 100s, etc.
Since we were doing a Frozen theme, I made the chart to go with the theme. You're welcome to print your own copy here.
Xander is pretty excited! We talked about it and decided that if he fills out the whole chart, we'll go back to the Y that has the really nice indoor swim area.
Adding stickers. This is what he wanted to do. Honestly, I'm a little torn on the stickers. On the one hand, small stickers like this is great for his fine motor skills. However, a Do-a-Do marker or coloring would allow us to still see the number.
***Update*** We finished our first 100s chart! Xander asked me to add a page with Anna and change some of the colors. Here's what he wanted, so I added it to the file in case your little one would like some variety also.
Even though Xander can read, he struggles a bit with understanding words that rhyme. I designed this word family activity to give him some extra practice. It includes three threes for -og, -ig, and -ug words. I hope your little ones enjoys it as well!
I realized that I haven't updated on what we're doing for reading since we finished the 1500 Book Challenge in December. I reading post is way overdue!
Five for Five
A couple of years ago I was reading about teaching kindergartners and came across the recommendation that teachers should read them the same story for story time everyday for a week. The idea was that the kids would get more comfortable with the story and vocabulary, make more connections, and usually end up liking the stories better due to familiarity. The idea seemed interesting, but inappropriate for my infant.
Lately, however, I have revisited the idea. In addition to the normal reading we do for fun and for bonding, I have made an effort to pick five books a week that we read at least five days. I have been trying to pick one "story" and then some short nonfiction or sight words books. I tend to gravitate towards nonfiction with real photographs and big fonts (like these or these) so that Xander and I can read every other page without him getting fatigued by the end of the five books (you can check out this blog post for an overview of how I taught him to read so young). I also like that these books expose him to concepts and information he wouldn't get from the regular stories we read. Heck, even I am learning new things from them.
Poetry
I also recently decided to try out some poetry with Xander. I bought A Light in the Attic with the idea of reading him one poem a night. I never imagined he would absolutely love them and develop favorite poems (current favorite it is "How Not to Have to Dry the Dishes"). We actually end up reading 4-5 poems a night, although we repeat a lot of them from day to day. I myself was never all that into poetry, but I am happy to light the spark in him!
I love that my munchkin LOVES to read! I hope it is a love that lasts a lifetime!
I found him trying to read in the dark late one night.
Recently I taught a lesson on subatomic particles to some 9th graders. As part of the lesson I made a bunch of mats to represent places in the orbitals. They took me a while to put together, so I needed to come up with something else to do with them. Hence, the Sight Words Play Mats.
To make the mats I cut some $2 shower curtain liners into squares. Then I used a few colors of duct tape to make borders around each square. Then I used a big roll of masking tape to put a word on each side of the mat. I figured the masking tape would be easy to switch out for harder words later. For now I mostly used sight words and prepositions.
Xander wanted to help out.
Showing off his mats.
We played a few ways. I put out a bunch of the mats and had him jump, hop, and skip to different words. In this picture he is attempting to stand on one foot on "because."
Then I put them all out in a big "snake." He would call out a word then jump on it, working his way around the snake. Since there were words on both sides, I could just flip over each mat when he made it through them all. Of course, he had me play too.
I could see tossing balls or shooting darts on them. What ideas can you think of?
Teaching Xander to read vocabulary words was super fun and easy (mostly through Little Reader). Sight words are much less fun. I still flash them to him through Little Reader, but it is hard to reinforce them with no pictures/tangible items. For a fun twist, I decided to play a sight words balloon popping game.
I started with a bunch of water balloons and a push pin.
Xander got to pick a balloon and read me the word. If he read it correctly, he got to poke it with the pin.
His reactions were priceless!
The game was a great success! He immediately asked to play again! How do you reinforced sight words with your kids?
I FINALLY caught Xander reading on camera! I have been wanting to for a while, but he isn't always cooperative when a camera is out. I was thrilled to get him in the right mood! I am so proud of my little guy and how well he is doing! Anyway, I recently posted it to my personal Facebook account and had some inquiries as to how we did it, so I thought I would share.
Xander is 26 months in the video
Let me preface this by saying that I understand that there are plenty of people out there that will criticize me for teaching my baby to read. I've heard a variety of arguments from "let them be babies while they can" and "he will be bored in school." I have my list of counter arguments, including that my son will not be one of the 40% of kids who struggle to learn to read in school, but ultimately, its a personal choice, just like choosing cloth or disposable diapers is a choice. I am not saying this is what all parents should do, just what we did.
How We Did It
Really, I did a variety of things with him and I think it is likely all contributed to him being able to read so well for his age. There was no drilling or testing. The whole process was easy and fun for both of us.
Immersion:
I knew I wanted Xander to love books, so I made an effort to make books and words a part of life from the time he was very young. As soon as he was mobile, I made sure he always had access to books by setting out board books on a low shelf. Now that he is older, he has a shelf of books on every level of the house, which I can rotate as needed. I read to him frequently. If the font on the page is big enough for him to see, I run my finger under the words as I read them. We make frequent trips to the library and completed a 1500 Book Challenge just last month.
On top of reading a ton of books, I have also made sure he is always exposed to words. As a baby he watched Your Baby Can Read movies and I did some high speed flashcards with him. He also watched Your Baby Can Discover. Now that he is a little older, he has moved on to the Your Child Can Read movies. I don't think any of these movies could have taught him to read as much as he does, but I do think they gave him some great exposure (and let me get a shower every day. Single mom, remember?).
Little Reader:
When Xander was an infant I read How To Teach Your Baby To Read by Glenn Doman, which introduced me to the idea of high speed flashing. While I didn't follow Doman's exact plan, I did stick with the whole word approach and the flashing method. Basically, you show the child each word as you say it (cheerfully) very quickly, no more than two seconds each. The words should be in lowercase, with the exception of proper nouns, because that is what is most prevalent in written language. The words also need to be large enough that young eyes can interpret them instantaneously.
I started making my flashcards on poster board with giant red markers, but soon learned that they were time consuming to make and I was clumsy with the big flashcards. Then I ended up finding Little Reader, which is probably the best investment I have ever made as far as early education. Then I printed most of my flashcards from there. I tried to flash him a set of words daily, but did not quite have the time to follow a good, consistent schedule.
When Xander was about 15 months we really started working on reading through Little Reader. It is a program that teaches reading and vocabulary in a method very similar to that described by Doman, only it includes pictures and videos as well. It comes with about a year of premade lessons, but you can also make your own and parents can share them through the forums. Each lesson takes less than five minutes, and they recommend doing two lessons a day. Xander only does one of the premade lessons a day and then I try to do some category flashing with it. I turn the audio and video off and flash through a category of words as fast as I can while still being clear. It takes about 30 seconds to do a category. I have also made categories of words and pictures to go with his interests. Since he loves Thomas and has a ton of Thomas books, I made a category to teach him all of the trains' names. Recently I started flashing him sight words, which has really improved his reading skills. He likes going through all of the categories so much, I will often do them multiple times for him at a sitting. For older words he already knows, I just turn on autoplay and let him watch while I clean or get something quick done. It used to take him longer, but now he can learn a new category of words is less than a week of flashing. I can't make new categories nearly as fast as he can learn them!
Reinforcement:
I try to make games to reinforce a lot of the words he has learned. We play matching games with toys, flashcards or 3 Part Cards, which he loves (you can download the ones I've made here). We also use little plastic animals to play with his Sight Words Zoos (description about halfway down on this page). We jump on words or act out words. While none of these games actually teach him the words, they do serve as fun reinforcement.
Jumping on the words as I call out an animal name.
When we're reading books together, I have started having him read the words he knows. Some books, that means every word. If he is tired or not in the mood, I will definitely still read to him. What blows me away is when he reads words I never actually taught him. There are a lot he has figured out just from being read to . While I'm not sure all of those words would transfer to other contexts, reading in context is still a valuable skill.
All in all, I did my best to set him up with the best learning environment possible. I spent 5-10 minutes a day flashing him words, but only if he was in the mood and wanted to see them. I encouraged him and gave him the opportunity to learn. It totally paid off. While he still can't read everything and isn't completely smooth, I am thrilled with how well he is doing. If I can teach my baby with my crazy schedule, anyone can!
I shot this video this morning. It is Xander playing one of his favorite games, matching up his 3 part cards. This was his first time seeing the Christmas cards, so he did a pretty good job. I had been flashing him the Little Reader lesson with these words for about a week before playing. You can download the lesson for free here. (I know the video is pretty long, but I shot it in order to preserve memories, not specifically for the blog).
As anyone who has been following the blog for a while knows, I used to use Little Reader with Xander. Little Reader is a fantastic program that teacher infants and toddlers reading in a style very similar to that recommended by Glenn Doman. Last fall, Xandere completely lost interest in the program, so we completely stopped using it. A couple of weeks ago he was wanting to use the computer, so I decided to try getting it back out. Oh my goodness, what a hit! He absolutely LOVES it now. In fact, first thing he does in the morning is run to the computer and start pounding on the seat (his signal that he wants to sit in the chair). The other day the computer was doing something so it was being SO slow in opening the program, the poor kid cried like he was hurt. He wanted to do his reading program! I am absolutely thrilled. It is one more tool to help him learn to read.
In fact, he has been so hooked on Little Reader, that we have switched to doing his color flash cards on it half the time. I think for future themes I will try to create a Little Reader lesson to reinforce what we are learning. I will include the link for any Little Reader users who want to download them.
Back in April I decided to join in a book challenge with Xander. Many Mommy bloggers are doing a 1500 book challenge with their little ones, but I edited ours down to 250. Today we completed it! It took a little longer than expected, since I went a month with no car to get to the library. Also, we reread books so often, that new ones didn't get worked in every day. I plan to keep counting new books for the rest of the year so that we can have a basis on which to set our goal for next year. I am so happy that he enjoys reading and love that special time with him!
Since we try to make learning fun, I am always trying new ways of presenting things or turning them into games. I love reading the ideas other mom's come up with, so thought I would make a Fun and Games section to share ours.
Being the curious little guy he is, Xander has to know what is going on at all times. He loves to watch me do things like vacuum or sweep. I decided to use this.
I got out a bunch of flash cards of action words.
I set him in the middle of the room and showed him one flash card at a time. Then I would act out the action. When appropriate I would do it around him, or out of the room and back (for example, I would skip in circles around him). Not only was it engaging for him, he thought this was hilarious. For some of the words, like clap or stand, I would help him do the action. He enjoyed that also, but not quite as much as Mommy being silly.
