Teaching kids to read

[Peijen]

I am thinking about teaching Aaron to read, he love looking at books and he can recognize a few Chinese characters already. But I am not sure how to each him to pronounce words. Other than stick him in front of TV with sesame street, how do I teach him to read? He recognize all 26 capital alphabets but gets confused when I am trying to teach him about lower case alphabets (yet he has no problem with Chinese/English names for objects ) He can recite a few books from memory pretty well, maybe I should buy some books on tape and start him on lords of the ring?

I am trying to get him to read himself so he can read to Allie in a few months and I can start slacking off.

[Alan]

How old is Aaron?

Generally, unless there is a learning or developmental disability, kids are wired to learn language - you just need to keep exposing him to it.

Using specific methods can help them acquire language more quickly but I don't think it leads to any long-term advantages. Acquiring two languages early is generally a good thing though, even if it seems like he's mixing things up at first.

[Alan]

You generally don't need to specifically teach him how to pronounce words unless he has a hearing or speech disorder.

Young kids generally have difficulty pronouncing a lot of different words, and not until they're around 3 or 4 is their speech fully understood by strangers.

[Alan]

http://www.asha.org/public/speech/development/chart.htm

Here's a chart for what to expect as well as some tips for helping the process along.

[Peijen]

Pronounce written words, he had no problem with speech. I think it's easy enough if I just each him C-A-T is cat, but I want him to learn how to sound out written words.

[Jason]

He's probably a little too young for that kind of thing yet. Most kids don't start learning phonics until their 6 at the earliest. You shouldn't be an overbearing asian father.

If you're really interested in trying to push things along for some reason or other there are techniques to start reading earlier, but they require a lot of work. My sister and brother-in-law worked a ton with my nephew so that he would be mainstreamed.

[Dave]

Just hit him until he reads.

[Peijen]

You shouldn't be an overbearing asian father.

No such thing! I am just trying to be lazy haha. Maybe I will teach him alphabet additions instead. My attempt to teach him to count as succ() didn't go too well either, but he can show fingers to numbers so there is that. He can count from 1 - 10 with no problem, but somehow x2 and x6 doesn't exists? 11, 13, 14, 15, 17 ... 21, 23, 24, 25, 27... doesn't even make sense

My other attempt to teach him procedural input went pretty well, (stand up, pick me up, go there, play, count down, fall down), but didn't like it when I throw faults when orders are incorrect instead of just ignoring it.

[quantus]

I've introduced Erik to the Leapfrog videos from pretty young. There's Letter Factory (letters and their sounds - basic sound only if there's more than one like with vowels), Word Factory (putting letters together to make 3-letter words), Complex Word Complex (start to make 4-letter words and teach concepts like silent E makes the vowel before say its name). I've also got the first box in the BoB (Box of Books) system from Costco. He's says the letters just fine, but refuses to say them fast to make a word. My mom got him simple 3/4-piece puzzles with the pictures of something like a cat and the letters below. Each piece has one of the letters of the word. I figure is we show him similar types of things, he'll eventually just make things start to click in his little mind one day. Anyways, because of these things, he's known his letters and the sounds they make since before he was 2. He's also been able to singing A-B-C-D for quite a while.

Erik also can count up to 30, but likes to skip 13 and 15. However, he's started saying 15, so just 13 to work on.

Now that he's started preschool, he's been learning more songs to sing and he's like, "sing the buzz song", and we're like, "we don't know that song Erik, can you sing it for us?" Then he decides not to sing it for us so we still don't know several of the songs he knows.

What you need to be working on more is letting him play with crayons and such so he gets better fine motor skills.