Beginning Reading

[Ladybug]

We love the Bob books. Short and sweet. There are Bob book apps too where they can drag the letters for shape recognition, sound recognition or spelling. The graphics are really good and engaging. Fun times!! Go A!!

[alison]

Costco has tons of Bob books right now. At least ours here does. She'll get there eventually. I wouldn't worry at all!

[peggyfromwastate]

I went to a very informative kindergarten readiness panel presentation as part of our preschool coop. We live in a super educated and crazy accelerated parent pushing area. The teachers said, "we do not care if your child knows the alphabet, reads, writes, or any of that. We teach them that stuff. We care if they are socially ready for preschool. Can they share? Can they wait their turn? Do they respect other students space?" This kind of thing. The teachers all said early reading is not necessarily an indicator if anything. Some kids just learn reading earlier. They just do. My dd17 did not learn to read until the start of 3rd. When she started reading, she started with books that interested her like Harry potter and stuff like that. And she never stopped reading.

Hang in there and try not to let the competitive parents suck you into their vortex of "my five year old is the best because..."

Hugs--- this transition to K is hard enough for all concerned without worries of academic readiness!!

[lovelight]

I kept thinking I'd come back to this later to write a response on my computer, but here I am realizing I never wrote anything so I'm just going for it on my phone.

If she's knows her alphabet that is already a step ahead of some. I would literally not worry about trying to teach her to sound out words at all. That will come midway through kindergarten. The first half of the year with common core (the nationwide standards a lot of states are adopting) is letters and their sounds, tracking print, learning directionality, etc. If you want to work on sounds that's great and less she *has* to learn at school, but it's definitely not the end all be all.

Leap Frog is great like others have said. YouTube has tons of phonics songs (literally type phonics song)...a is for alligator /a/ /a/ alligator, b is for ball /b/ /b/ ball...just like someone else mentioned. If they know those song they know the sounds automatically! Plus they have silly little pictures that the kids love. Havefunteaching (also on youtube) has tons of, what any grown up would think are really stupid, songs that kids love. They have them for sight words and I think sounds too. Just let it be fun. Don't stress over it for sure.

Oh, and just for fun, YouTube koo koo kangaroo and watch her dance along to some of their songs. Always adorable.

[MrsK]

I went to a very informative kindergarten readiness panel presentation as part of our preschool coop. We live in a super educated and crazy accelerated parent pushing area. The teachers said, "we do not care if your child knows the alphabet, reads, writes, or any of that. We teach them that stuff. We care if they are socially ready for preschool. Can they share? Can they wait their turn? Do they respect other students space?" This kind of thing. The teachers all said early reading is not necessarily an indicator if anything. Some kids just learn reading earlier. They just do. My dd17 did not learn to read until the start of 3rd. When she started reading, she started with books that interested her like Harry potter and stuff like that. And she never stopped reading.

Hang in there and try not to let the competitive parents suck you into their vortex of "my five year old is the best because..."

Hugs--- this transition to K is hard enough for all concerned without worries of academic readiness!!

Yes! All of this. I have a much bigger struggle with K1's social/emotional maturity. It's a lot harder to teach kids to be civilized, follow directions, be considerate of others, etc.

[houseelf]

You should pick up a copy of "Einstein never used flash cards". It is a call for kids to return to play based preschool and learning of social graces.