So my daughter can’t read yet

My mom used to tell me I started reading when I was 3. My son Samuel loved reading even before finishing preschool. My little Amanda is already five, she’ll be six in January next year, and a series of events have made it hard for her to learn that particular skill.

The past 2 years she went to private bilingual daycare, and she was doing fantastic, she was doing great at fine motor skills and spoken English(our first language is Spanish). Education policies changed in this country to modify the age of the 1st graders. So now, my daughter has to go to first grade when she turns 6. Before the changes, the minimal age was 7.

Some other things happened and I had to take her out of the private school, so this year, instead of the 8 hours a day she used to spend at daycare, she has been attending to public school for 3 hours a day (preschool wasn’t mandatory, so they set this schedule to make the transition easier for kids that haven’t been on a school schedule).
English is now out of the table, and she really felt the downgrade as soon as she started this school year. To make things even worse, the teachers of the public system went on a strike on September 10th, so my kids haven’ had any classes ever since. I don’t think they will be resuming classes before the end of this year, which means they will be back to school in February 2019. That’s a 5 months vacation!

I’m starting to worry. My father has always told me that I shouldn’t worry about things, but get to work on them instead.

Meanwhile I’ve tried some strategies to help Amanda with her reading. I didn’t have to do much with Samuel, -I should write about it too, maybe later – but I’m trying to reverse engineer his reading process to see if it works with his sister. So this are some of the things we’ve been doing:

1. Having easy access to books! We have lots of books on their room. Most of them have nice illustrations and cute stories. She prefers colouring books, though.

2. Alphabet apps and web sites. Kids love technology, she has tried some of those apps, but doesn’t particularly love any of them. She knows probably 60% of the alphabet, but she knows some letters only in English and some other only in Spanish...so there is a conflict there.

3. Writing. She knows how to write her name since last year. So I’ve tried to make her conscious about the sounds, and how they have a corresponding written letter. She likes writing better. She asks me how to write words. One of these days she decided to make a list of the chores we needed to do at home. Then she started asking: how do I write “Make the beds?. I would spell everything for her, remarking common sounds and eventually there were about 7 chores in the list. Sometimes I have to use some details to help her with some lettes, i.g: “the b is the one with one lower belly, the B is the one with two bellies” . Interesting fact about her writing: She tends to start on the right side of the paper, so she has written her name like this “adnamA”. I’ve read about it ,it’s called mirror writing. And it’s fairly common on starters. I’ll keep an eye on it though.

4. She also uses the Jenga and Lego blocks to make letters, I spell anything she asks me to, and then she builds the words with blocks.

5. I read about the Glenn Doman method. Found some videos online based on it. They basically get around 10 words (eventually they build up to many more), each one in a separate card, like sight words, and show them to the kids and reading them at the same time. A lot of people have found it very helpful. They can start really early, the method is used even on babies. But Amanda lost interest very soon. I got her to recognize some words but it seemed like a torture for her. So I didn’t want to push it. I don’t want her to hate reading before she can do it.

6. Magnetic board: I got her a nice little dual board for last Christmas. On one side she can write and draw with chalk, and on the other side there is a whiteboard, that she can use both for writing and playing with the magnetic letters and numbers. She has used it a lot. I think it was a good gift.
   

7. Letter soup: They got some letter soup game on the Nintendo, so I told her: You don’t really need to read to be able to play: Just pay attention to the words, and try to find one that has looks exactly the same. She tried it but it's still hard for her. But I see potential in this one, so I'll save it for later.

8. I am not proud of this one, but I have pointed out that in some circumstances, she could be in a better position If she could read. I guess this I’ve done out of frustration, but also to let her know the importance of reading. I know it’s not her fault, but sometimes she wants us to read and write everything for her, especially when video games or electronic devices are involved. She now discovered she can “ask google” for stuff. So I need to make her understand, that she needs reading skills anyways.

9. Last thing we did, we grabbed “Alice in Wonderland” and instead of reading it to her, I tried a different angle. She already knows it because we have read it plenty of times, so I started showing her how the word Alice looks. Then I asked her to find more Alice s. We counted them through the entire book, and then we did the same with some of the characters. We did it weeks ago. Last night, when I was writing this post, I decided to try it once again. She loved it. And I saw she remembered the words Alice, Rabbit, Queen and King from last time. This time we had an interesting twist: she was singing during the entire “quest” for the words. I will soon write about this awesome ability to improvise songs. I believe I can get her to find some common words like "yes" "no" "you" "family"....using her favorite books. I like this strategy, and I think we'll stick to it for as long as she enjoys it.
   

Here is what I’ve learnt:

Kids don’t learn the same way (we all know that). Not even siblings. They can be very different, so we need a great repertoire of resources and ideas to help them in their learning process. They shouldn’t be compared.

There is no exact time to start reading. I guess proper stimulation is needed, but then it will happen when they are ready. So we must work on it, patiently, and without forcing the process. Remember my dad’s advice “Don’t preoccupy, just occupy yourself”, which in this case means “Don’t worry. Do your homework and then wait”
Kids can bring up their own ways, so we should always try to incorporate them. Learning should be fun, let’s keep it that way.

Thanks for reading, I hope this is helpful, and If you have some other tips that I could use, just let me know in the comments!

@empathetic