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DD 5 starts kindergarten next year and I'm trying to teach her to read. So far she knows all her single letter sounds and can read simple 3 letter words like dog, mat, pet, fat, top etc. does anyone know any good websites etc that I can print out sight words and should I now teach her the double letter sounds like 'oo', 'oa' etc. any advice is greatly appreciated.
Mem fox has a great book about teaching kids to read- I think it's called reading magic.
ABC reading eggs seems to have a great reputation.
Don't stress too much - school is for learning to read. Although I'm sure I'll be trying to teach mine when they're older!
Im no expert but happy to share my experience - my daughter was great with reading from a young age and is two grades ahead every year with reading assessments.
I think genetics probably play some part, as there is a history in my family of great english skills (my grandmother said she used to get awards at school) and learning difficulties like dyslexia can run in families too. But, I read a great deal with my daughter. We'd spell out the name letters on her door everytime we went through it and she could spell her name at twelve months old. I strongly believe its lots of practise and picture books/flash cards as we learn in images. If I said to you, 'dog' you'd see an image of a dog in your head, not the word d_o_g. Then the word is on the back or with it in some way. Good luck :)
We got DD ABC reading eggs in July last year, best thing we did! I thought her correctly hw to read, she reads well above her age, she's in prep
I am a big fan of reading eggs. They have a free two week intro to see if you like it before you commit to it.
Rhymes/word families are important eg ten, pen, den, hen
The single most important thing is to read to them. Every day.
Yeah that! I didn't do anything other than read to my DD1 and help her develop a love of books and story telling. Actually the only other thing was to get her to draw her story in pictures, then tell it to me and I would write it for her. She is reading and writing at a level almost 2 years above her age currently and loves books. The Mem Fox book is great but basically reinforces the "read, read and read some more" approach.:
fyi mumgo has 50% off subscription to reading eggs if you are interested. I havent used it but was looking into it
Another big tick for reading eggs!
My 5 year old DS blows people away.
There's a website called Starfall which is great. It's American, so you have to watch out for the accents, but it's free and my ds loved it. It is very phonetically based and ds didn't use phonics to learn to read, but he still really enjoyed it. (He didn't learn to read using it, but I credit it in large part for how quickly he progressed.)
Forget word recognition for now. Just foster a love of books. Read to your child. Have books that your child reads to you - they may memorise it (DS memorised a fair bit of Julia Donaldson before he went to school, whereas when I was little it was AA Milne) or make up a story around the pictures.
Show your child that you love reading too - read a book when they're around. Have the two of you reading different books side by side and enjoying it.
Write books for them. To help DS with his reading, I write stories at his level with a bit of a push about his favourite things. So Dr Who, Angry Birds, Magic Volcanoes... helps his reading vocabulary. When he was younger we also had Night Garden books and Thomas learn-to-read books.
If you wanted to buy books, DS and I have and enjoy a lot the Julia Donaldson Songbirds series: the first book in the stage 1+ books is very easy, working up to harder by the end of the series. Then you move onto the next level when the child is ready. We have them as anthologies and Liebling loves reading them, does better with those than the school books due to enjoying the content of most of them.
My kids are doing Reading Eggs through school and its fantastic.
Also, simple books like Spot and Grug are great for getting the kids to sound words out. My 5 year old especially will try and read anything that's in front of her and while at times its inconvenient or frustrating, her skills are definitely linked to how much time we give her with books.