As you may recall, I am a babysitter for my close friend’s little girl. My own son is nearly grown, and he was very different as a kid than the little girl is.
She is very very chatty; why? what are you doing? what is that? what did you say? howcome? etc. nearly constantly. Even when watching a movie, she asks an uninterrupted stream of questions throughout the whole thing. I have always been one to encourage a healthy curiosity, but wow, it’s exhausting.
Anyway, I would like to start familiarizing her with letters and words, and I just know that the SDMB will have many excellent bits of advice on things which succeeded with children you have known.
I worry that she will not be able to disengage herself from the constant questions long enough to really focus on this. Do you think it’s too soon to try? Is it wrong for jellybeans to be involved? (the small, jelly-belly ones. They seem to be the preferred motivator.)
Let me thank you all in advance, because I will be working 10 hours tomorrow, & won’t get to the board til evening. Thanks!
I was one of those precocious kids, and unfortunately I can’t remember exactly how they taught me to read but I can recommend a few things.
First, read read read to her. Answer her questions. If she wants to hear the same story three times a day, do it - sometimes that repetition can lead to understanding that words mean things.
Don’t do the jellybean thing. Make it natural. She’s only three - if she takes to it, that’s great, but don’t make it any kind of pressure (and wanting jellybeans is pressure!).
I seem to remember that my parents made me some sort of flashcard things on index cards…like, maybe they made cards of common nouns and sort of showed them to me when I had the thing in my hand? Again, connecting the fact that the written word is connected to objects indicated by the spoken word.
Think of it as: you’re not trying to give her a new task to do. You’re giving her a new possible channel for her energies.
If she wants to, it’ll happen - if she doesn’t, it won’t. I must say, she sounds from your brief description to be more like my daughter (early talker, very imaginative, started with the “whys” at around two, now five and just starting to get keen on the reading and writing thing) than, say, my nephew (quite reserved and thoughtful, loves order and lists, categorising things and lining up his toys, first started writing his name a couple of months after his second birthday and has gone on in leaps and bounds since then)
IOW, don’t get frustrated if the ‘chatty’ thing doesn’t turn out to mean anything!
Having said that, from about the age of three my daughter has loved this game. The basic premise is “spell words to defeat monsters”. She loves the imaginative aspects (and the corny dialogue!). We started off with her on my lap watching what I was doing. Then after a while I started to direct her to click things for me (“Click on the ‘O’. That’s the circle. Now the ‘S’ - that’s the curvy one like a snake”). These days we’re at the “I think you could spell ‘fight’ with those letters. What do you think ‘ffffffffffffight’ might start with?” stage.
You can’t rush brain development: some kids are ready to read at 3, some kids aren’t ready until 6. AFAICT, it doesn’t say anything about future academic potential, any more than the kid that walks at 9 months is more likely to be a star athlete than the one that walks at 14 months. My mother swears I knew all my letters and sounds by 18 months, but I didn’t read until I was almost 6–I just couldn’t make the cognitive leap. Once I did, I was reading years ahead of grade level in a matter of weeks.
If she doesn’t know the letters at three years old, forget about teaching her to read. Just read to her and get some letter blocks to play with and familiarize her with the letters. There should be no teaching, just playing with some learning built into it. She’ll learn the letters quickly if you simply play with blocks and note the letters on them as you play. The only words you should work on at this age are her name and whatever she calls her parents. Being able to spell your own name is fun.
Most kids aren’t ready to read at 3 years old. My daughter knew all of the letters by the time she was two and had a vocabulary as large as a 15-year-old’s when she was four, but she didn’t start reading until she was 5 and a half. The majority of the kids in her kindergarten class don’t read yet and that’s perfectly normal. Almost all of them will pick it up within the next year with very little teaching.
I think my sister taught her daughter by just implementing letters and words into her normal play. She knew her letters by 2, could write her name by 3 (palindrome name), and was reading consistently by 4. Now at 7 (going on 15), she’s already in 2nd grade (skipped 1st).
I’ve got a 5 year old niece who is very bright whose mother tried to teach her to read as a 3 or 4 year old and it was frustrating to both. Now she’s five and a half, learning phonics in homeschool kindergarden, and it works much better.
Having said that, I see nothing wrong with trying to teach the child–I just don’t think that the goal should be reading. Start with letter recognition, shapes, colors, names of things, etc.
And if she can’t disengage from the questions, maybe it’s a sign she’s not ready yet. It’s ok. Reading early is not much of a predictor of anything, except maybe a highly motivated teacher.
My neice was like that (very bright, constant questions during movies, etc.). My sister finally lost patience one day and grumped at her for it. My neice’s response, at age four: “I’m just trying to understand.”
At this age, it’s all about exposure. The more things she is exposed to the more she will learn about. Don’t crowd her with two hundred different toys at once, but kids that have lots of experiences and observations about the world around them have those “stored away” to make stronger connections to as they get older. Go to a zoo. Watch the stars. Watch the clouds. Look at trees and flowers. Visit an aquarium. Play with slinkies. Find a children’s museum. Blow bubbles. All of these activities show her about how something works. And I second the suggestions about steering away from formal “teaching;” show her as many different kinds of books as possible. Kids’ books are great, but show her a globe, or a map, and a magazine with lots of bright pictures about the world, an encyclopaedia or a children’s dictionary that has illustrations. While recitation of ABCs, numbers, colors, and shapes are really important and should be underway around this age, most of actual learning at this age is a silent process.