Our 4-year-old
is starting to read. She’s doing really well, but struggles with sounding out
words. Her memory is good if we say the words a few times, but she doesn’t get
the idea of sounding out all the letters. She’ll do the first letter and that’s
about it.
It’s a
difficult stage. Monkey has a habit of doing things slowly when she knows there’s
something else she doesn’t want to do. She also easily gets distracted, so we
start to get frustrated with her. However, this isn’t a case of her acting out
or being a pest. She’s genuinely struggling to sound out the words—and we’re at
a loss for how to help her.
Why am I
blogging about this? Well, a mixture really.
If anyone
knows how to support children in sounding out their words, we’d really
appreciate some pointers. There aren’t always ways to split the words up to
help, so that doesn’t always work. Some of the words she struggles with are “let,”
“park,” and “they.”
Also, I want
to share for those who have children struggling to read. Try not to get annoyed
or fed up. Children need our support to keep going. We’re trying to make games
out of reading, but that doesn’t always work well for bed time (and stories are
read at night). It’s going to be easy to get frustrated and annoyed, but that’s
not going to help matters.
We found
that reading too late makes it harder for Monkey to read the words she knows.
She gets giddy and silly. So, we do it earlier at a time when she’s awake and
willing to work on the book. Work with your children slowly and encourage a
lot. Children work extremely well with encouragement.
Now if only
we could figure out how to explain sounding out and help her with them.
Feel free to
share your thoughts or tips in the comments below. I know there are plenty of
parents who have been through teaching children to read in the past!
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