Most children love to listen to stories and even from an early age are happy to sit on an adult’s knee and look at a picture book. This is an excellent introduction to books and gives children and adult pleasure as well as a time for love and cuddles!
It is always a good idea to establish a routine of reading to your baby at bedtime. This routine can continue until your child is capable of reading by himself. It stimulates the child’s imagination, increases vocabulary and establishes concepts such as shape, colours, number, and animals and encourages the child to want to read for himself!
Once this love for books is established children should start to learn how to read. They may use a combination of three methods of instruction: auditory training, phonics, and whole language. .gif)
Usually one of these methods will help only a few children. Sometimes only using two out of three methods may still leave numerous children illiterate. However, when auditory training, phonics and whole language are merged, literacy rates increase significantly.
Learning how to read begins in hearing
Auditory training
Many people think children learn how to read using their eyes. This is true but they need to have good auditory skills as listening and hearing play a larger part in hearing the correct sound and word. Reading is actually learned through the ears. Parents lay a foundation for success in reading by talking to a child, reading books to her, and playing auditory games such as rhyming. The more books you read, the bigger her vocabulary becomes. A bigger vocabulary allows her to recognize lots of words while she reads.
| Auditory games ideas |
Rhyming cards |
Look! Listen! |
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Think! It is a good idea to ensure that your children are familiar with the alphabet. Try pointing to each letter and ask your child to, "Tell me how this letter sounds."
Auditory Training for children
Listening for sounds
Have the children close their eyes and become sensitive to environmental sounds about them. Sounds like cars, airplanes, animals, outside sounds, sounds in the next room etc., can be attended to and identified.
2. Recorded sounds. Sounds can be placed on tape or records and the child is asked to identify them. Dog barking, pigs grunting, planes taking off, trains, birds, and fire engines etc. are some of the sounds that may be recorded.
3. Home made sounds.
Children should close their eyes and listen to the sounds made. You can use any sounds, such as a telephone ringing, your own front door bell, familiar music, tearing a piece of paper, using a stapler, bouncing a ball, , tapping on a window, turning the lights on, leafing through pages in a book, cutting with scissors, opening a drawer, jingling money, rustling of leaves or a kettle boiling.
Food sounds
Make the sound of grating carrots, chopping beans, scrubbing potatoes or cooking a sausage in a pan and ask the child to listen for the sound and describe what is happening.
Shaking sounds
Place small hard items such as stones, beans, salt, sand, or rice into small containers or jars with covers. Have the child identify the contents through shaking and listening.
4. Other games
Children should close their eyes and listen. They should listen and count the number of times that they hear the drum being beaten, the ball bouncing or hands being clapped!. They should say whether this was fast or slow, and also try to repeat the pattern. It is fun to make this rhythmic such as slow, slow, fast, fast, slow, slow!
Teach children to differentiate between sounds
1. This is a favourite listening game. Children have to have their eyes closed and decide from which part of the room it is coming from i.e. is it near or is it far? This can be extended to trying to decide which room of the house the noise is in!
2. Children have to learn to decide between loud and soft sounds. Try a jingle of a soft bell and the harsh sound of an alarm!
3. Hide and seek the sound. One child hides a music box or a ticking clock and all the other children have to find it
4. Play Blindman’s Bluff.
One child says something like an animal sound or asks a question. The child who is blind folded has to say the correct name of the person who spoke
Phonics and Letter sounds
For success at the beginning stages of reading the child must perceive the individual phonic sounds of the language, and must learn to discriminate each language sound that represents a letter shape from other sounds.
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Animal sounds used to teach phonics
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It is a good idea to teach the phonics sounds daily starting with these from Jolly Phonics for example.
I always write down letter sounds that are missed. You then can reinforce these sounds. If the child needs to learn most of the alphabet letter sounds, help her create her own Alphabet Book.
It is should be personalized by using pictures that are familiar and have an association for the particular child.
Many schools use Jolly Phonics to help children learn phonics so here are some
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Phonic actions for s,a,t,i,p and n
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Phonic actions for ck,e,h,r,m,d
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As you are working with your child be sure to point to each letter as you are saying the letter name and letter sound.
It is ideal to read the alphabet chart once a day and with this reinforcement your child will be able to point to each letter and say the sounds himself!
It is a good idea to have a phonic alphabet chart displayed on the wall at kid-height in his bedroom so he can look at it.
As you are teaching a letter sound, be careful not to add an "uh" sound at the end of the letter. The letter s should sound like a snake hissing, sounding as 'sss,' not 'suh.' If your child learns letters 'c', 'a', 't' as sounding 'kuh,' 'aah,' and 'tuh,' those sounds will not come together to say cat! There are actions for the Jolly Phonic sounds above and I have found that these help children remember the sounds more quickly.
Whole language
As children have heard stories read to them from babies they are used to seeing parents point to pictures, read the words and turn over the pages as the children listening and enjoy the story. Young child realise that this is reading and of course want to emulate this procedures. As they progress with phonics they will soon realise that the word c-a –t says ‘cat’ so will soon be able to ‘read ‘ this word.
‘I see a cat’ should soon be read as a sentence by a child. This gives the children a great sense of achievement.
The ‘whole language’ idea has strengths in enabling children to begin to write as soon as possible. They feel comfortable with words and enjoy using personal language skills to make the process of reading more interesting.
It is best therefore for children to be taught using Phonics, Auditory training and then the Whole Language with the aid of phonics and the pictures in their books!
Once children have mastered the basics of reading they will spend a life time of using this skill. They will be able to enjoy all forms of the written word.
This can be encouraged and illustrated to children by reading with them. Children will enjoy all the books that we had as children
As the children get older they can be encouraged to increase their vocabulary by reading about their hobbies or interests.
They will also be able to enjoy some of the children’s classic such as the following.
| Roald Dahl |
E.B. White |
C.S.Lewis |
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