<p>My kids are 28 and 27 now… we had Reader Rabbit on a Compaq luggable starting at about age 3. My daughter did not learn to read and did not learn to read and did not learn to read, and they were threatening to have her repeat first grade… then suddenly, in March of first grade she had enough words in her repertoire of sight-reading vocabulary that she could read, and things took off. I can remember the day when she ran down the street reading street signs and saying “I can read, I can read!” She was 6 3/4. She was never a phonetic reader–just sightreading. Her spelling was always great, too. </p>
<p>A few months later, we moved across the country, three weeks in the car and evenings in hotel rooms, and by the end of the trip, my daughter was reading the Boxcar Children series aloud to her brother (14 months younger) and he’d figured out how to read (although my D and my S are both convinced she taught him how to read), so the school he went to in the fall had him skip kindergarten entirely and go right into first grade. </p>
<p>One daughter was very young age wise in kindergarden and learned to read there. My second daughter was older and learned to read at home before school with the Bob books. Gosh, those times were exciting. I’ll never forget when my daughters first read to me. </p>
<p>We always read extensively to our children before they could read and for many years after they could read. I miss those times!</p>
<p>intparent- I don’t think the age a child learns to read impacts their later reading abilities. A love of stories and curiosity about language and communication I feel fosters the ultimate reader. I let my kids read anything they wanted. I alway believed reading was good whether it was Captain Underpants or an award winning “quality” book. </p>
<p>During son’s elementary years whole language was in vogue, but by then he was a reader. My era included plenty of phonics- and “new math”.</p>
<p>intparent- don’t you mean HUNDREDS of thousands of books…? It is easy to forget how many decades, not just years, of reading we have by our ages.</p>
<p>Ah, writing. Son’s is microscopic. Luckily for his teachers computers with word processing programs were available for his papers.</p>
<p>I still remember not finishing a Boxcar Children book my grade ahead sister had checked out and returned. I had the same teacher the next year but could never find it. Anyone else read their sibling’s books secretly? Mine wouldn’t let me read hers so I had to be sneaky. Oh, those sibling rivalries. </p>
<p>We had a neighbor kid who (in WI) got the required help in the public school for second grade when he had a reading disability- thank goodness for so much knowledge since my day so he wasn’t held back by this. Saw a Florida math test score article which gave a couple examples of 5th? grade questions. Kids need to read well enough to decode the problem to solve before doing the math.</p>
<p>The story in my family was that I taught myself to read when I was 4, but I never believed it. Then my own D taught herself to read at age 4. S did the same. I have no idea how to teach a child to read.
I read to my kids every single night from the time that they were infants until they started middle school. </p>
<p>Didn’t read the whole thread, just skipped (is that ok? A thread about reading and I did just skimmed?!!)</p>
<p>Literacy, specifically literacy for young children birth-5 - the time before they start school and reading on their own is my career. </p>
<p>Things to remember:
the goal of reading to a young child should NOT be for them to “learn to read”. The goal should be on shared time together with a book or storytelling, and building pre-literacy skills like dialogic reading (think reading and being read to with active participation), better attention span, listening skills, vocabulary development, better expressive and receptive language skills. Most of all, creating good memories of sitting on someone’s lap with books/stories.
language is the single most important predictor of school success - the best way for a child who cannot read yet - a child most likely under age five - is to be talked to or read to. This requires the child and another live, breathing person.<br>
you can buy gadgets, programs, apps, etc. to mimic reading or supplement person to person shared reading time, but none of that is necessary or more effective than a child, a book (or telling a personal story), a lap and someone who cares.<br>
try not to dictate what kids read. Reading comes in all shapes and forms - books, magazines, comic books, cookbooks, grocery store ads, cereal boxes, etc. </p>
<p>Many times it is true. Children who are read to often and have books accessible at their leisure become readers without a lot of outside intervention/structured learning. By having a literacy rich environment at home - reading materials of all sorts available for all ages, quiet areas or times of the day to encourage reading time (not a tv blaring 24/7), conversation that is literacy rich (unfortunately, in many homes most of the language is command oriented - “get your shoes”, “put your toys away”, “time for bed” - instead of back and forth conversation), all the emergent literacy skills are put into practice daily and within normal routines so that the process of learning to read happens naturally. </p>
<p>That said, some kids still struggle with the process of learning to read or becoming a better reader. But with the above in place, the journey is more likely to be successful eventually and most importantly, create a positive nature around books/reading. </p>
<p>FallGirl- my family’s experience is similar to yours. I was a very early reader (and I wasn’t sure I believed just how early) and my daughter was reading- a lot- by the time she turned 4. They would have her read to her pre-school class. My mother was the same way. We did a lot of reading to our kids and had a ton of books, but we never “taught” either one how to read. One day my daughter started reading street signs from her car seat in the back seat and I almost ran off the road! My son, on the other hand, was NOT an early reader and felt very traumatized because he was not reading before he turned 5. He didn’t enjoy reading the way my daughter and I did (my engineer husband does not like to read) until he was about 15 and then took off with it. He wound up being an English major in college.</p>
<p>I would not want to be raising kids in this day and age. I think with computers and social media, a lot of reading goes by the wayside. I know my OWN reading (of books as opposed to message forums) has suffered a lot. I used to welcome plane trips because I could sit and read. Now a lot of my flights have wifi! </p>
<p>We read and read, every night for years. On a train trip west, spring break of kindergarten, with plenty of lap time, Ds started figuring out the ads in a magazine, and it took off from there. By second grade they were around 8th grade level. Both had teachers who provided plenty of extra stimulation, and there were many other reading kids in the class who could do other projects while basic literacy was being worked on for those who were not reading. But whole language was in vogue, and I know some kids, a minority, had a rough time with learning to read, till phonics was later introduced. </p>
<p>My mom was a teacher in the 40s and 50s, and a big phonic proponent. She drilled sounding out a word into me, though I was not an early reader. first grade was hard, sans kindergarten, and then in second grade it all clicked and I quickly realized I could read any adult book. My mom was interested in radical educational theory in those days, so I read most of what she brought home, since I was in school regardless. </p>
<p>My S took a little longer, being a sports and activity minded kid, though was grade level appropriate. He appreciated the reading aloud far longer than my Ds, who preferred to read to themselves after a certain age. I had visions of reading Dostoyevsky aloud as the years passed, but they had their own ideas. </p>
<p>reading early isn’t a guarantee of reading well, and reading well isn’t always a predictor of academic mastery.</p>
<p>Anyway, my kids read on their own, early, with no formal instruction as to how. One started reading me the TV listings at about 3.5…the other was reading simple books in K. Both had a steady diet of read alouds, letter recognition games (informally — they had to hunt letters in the grocery store, for example, but that was to keep them occupied!) and fine motor skill fun. </p>
<p>In school, we can always, always, spot the children who are read to regularly. imho, the reason reading often, together, is important is that it associates nice, loving, relaxing, bonding attention with the books and those memories. Children who associate those things with books are most likely to keep reading.</p>