Learning To Read

[ailbhe]

I'm going to post the following review of several books and flashcard sets on Amazon:

"I bought these for my embryo and read them every morning and night but when she was born she was unable to speak, let alone read, and we had to use [randomly selected set in the same category] to teach her to read. Now she is two and loves to read what she calls her "baby books" but most of her reading is other MORE MATURE AND CHALLENGING texts YOU THICKOS."

It'll fit right in.

(We're leaning towards Peter and Jane, because they are small and cheap).

Comments

[ailbhe]

My family has its share of early readers. But TRULY if your two-year-old doesn't learn to read from any given book, that tells you VERY LITTLE about the book's usefulness in general.

I don't think any of us had flashcards, though. I must ask my mother. My youngest sister still couldn't read at five so they bought her an alphabet tape with songs; I can still remember them.

[hobbitbabe.livejournal.com]

The family I grew up in had a big bag of alphabet letters written on the back of cardboard from a macaroni box. It never occurred to me it was a teaching thing at the time; I just thought it was a cool thing to play with. You could even turn them upside down and do the puzzle of the macaroni box.

[ailbhe]

Hee. My kids play with the Scrabble letters when we play Scrabble. We have two sets with very different styles of blocks, for ease of sharing.

I've nothing against teaching children to read, as early as they like. But there's something very specific about the tone of these reviews on Amazon which rubs me up the wrong way. As you might guess.

[taimatsu]

Ooh ooh ooh, I've just remembered we had flashcards! They came in a flat red box with a black border. I don't know if anyone 'taught' me using them, but I could read well before I started school.

I had completely forgotten those :) Hurray!

Also (memory stirred because they were in a similar box) we had Cuisenaire rods. All very Montessori. (I only went for a term, my brothers for longer.) Yay early memories!

[ailbhe]

We have Cuisenaire Rods but I'm not very Montessori about using them, they just play with them.

They are handy though.

[micheinnz.livejournal.com]

Cuisenaire rods are bog-standard teaching tools over here. Nothin' Montessori about them at all.

[ruthi.livejournal.com]

My mum had a book 'teach your baby to read'. She tried it on my sister, apparently, and it didn't work, so she didn't on me.

When we were little, there was a metal tray with paper magnetic-backed letters that my sister and I played with. That was fun.

[rmc28]

My mother had that book and apparently that's why I can't remember not being able to read.

She's given it to me, along with Teach Your Baby Maths. I have to confess they are both on the top shelf of Charles's room waiting for me to decide fanf and I have time to work out how to use them.

I remember Peter & Jane books and loved them. I vote Peter & Jane.

[browngirl.livejournal.com]

That review is *hilarious*.

[sidheag.livejournal.com]

Maybe they've improved them, but Peter and Jane used to be *so* boring... I may have recommended Oxford Reading Tree's Songbird Phonics before, but if not, let me do so now. Some good stories. Although, I wouldn't buy too many easy ones, given that L may soon admit that she can read already :-)

[nex0s.livejournal.com]

My Mom taught me to read by 3 or so... but she didn't even realize that I was reading. She thought I had just memorized my favorite books, until she gave me the NY Times and I read a paragraph about Richard Nixon.

We didn't have any flash cards, maybe puzzles I don't remember. What I do remember is that when we were on the bus going somewhere, she'd point out letters and I'd say them aloud. That was lots of fun!

N.

[flybabydizzy.livejournal.com]

I could read before I started school, and remember sitting there bored while we all had to recite from a big reading chart - 49 years ago.
My son just sort of absorbed a certain amount of reading before he started school. I read to him a lot and although I didn't use flashcards, I did have lots of words written everywhere. My daughter struggled more - they're both dyslexic. I do remember she learned to read in school with the Oxford Reading Tree ( I think) books with Biff, Chip and Kipper the dog. They had realistically muddy children, and the signoff line was often 'Oh no' said mum. Gosh that was 13 years ago! They're probably looked down on by now for some educational reason.

[merryhouse.livejournal.com]

no no, they're still enthusiastically used ;-) I think they've written more since then - I was looking at the dates the other day and one of the ones we had was much later than the other.

Nadim brought his computer over to play - it was a Speccy! Fairly unlikely game graphics, mind... we had a little conversation about how nowadays he'd bring his DS, but that possibly wouldn't translate so well to being good at rocket controls.

There was a tv programme made of the Magic Key part of the scheme, which is popular in a nerdy way among smaller children.

[lovingboth]

'Oh no' :) the Oxford Reading Tree is still going strong. Good stuff, much better than the ones I remember having.

My favourite is one of the early ones, where the kids have a rope swing over a stream and Floppy the dog spots that it is breaking. Someone will clearly get wet, but who?