Claire has been painstakingly taking Oliver through the Reading Eggs programme on the computer, which are web-based lessons that are designed and aimed at nippers that want to read.
He started a little while back and has been doing absolutely brilliantly at it, learning about each letter in turn and, through repetition, playing games to make the lesson stick.
A game might introduce a letter, such a ‘B’, pronounced ‘buh’ in the phonetic-world, and then might have to burst the balloons that have the letter ‘b’ on it. Then, it progresses onto pictures of objects that start with the same sound, like ‘ball’, ‘balloon’ and so on, and then later, to later join them up so that there’s a ball and the better ‘b’ on it, to tie them both together.
The lessons are really fantastic, and we’re both absolutely amazed as to how well he’s done, earning lots of certificates from the lessons at set stages, so he’s got small challenges to work to, and a physical printed reward for doing so. Besides, he thinks he’s playing games and we know that he’s learning probably THE best thing in the world – if he struggles to read, then he’s going to carry that baggage around with him forever, so we’re investing in his future-self.
Claire’s also bought some of the books in the same range, so we’ve got some ‘grown-up’ style books for him to read to us at bed-time – he’s used to seeing Jack read his school story book to us, then as a reward for doing so, he gets either Claire or I to read to him. So, wanting to copy Jack and have what Jack’s got and be able to do what Jack does, Oli doesn’t put up a fight about doing so, as this is what he knows to be ‘normal’, which is great.
Oli and I have been working through the same Thomas the Tank Engine books that Jack and I went through a few years ago, and we’re almost done already. To begin with, he didn’t want to listen to the 5-10 minute stories, but now, it’s just part of going to bed. In fact, when we’re back late from anywhere, when it’s already late enough, trying to get him to go to bed without a story is a nightmare!! It’s quicker to read the book and get him off to sleep in a relatively happy mood, as opposed to spending the next half hour arguing with him and putting him back to bed endlessly. Again, as I said in an earlier post some time ago, it’s simply picking the battles.
Whilst he’s reading, there’s still plenty of words that he doesn’t yet know, but he’s getting to grips with a load already – to the point whereby he doesn’t need to sound-out each letter (phonetically) and try to join the sounds together, but he’s getting better at simply READING them and moving onto the next one.
I know this sounds like an obvious thing to say, as this is how children read – namely parents spending time with them, and helping them and teaching them new words, etc etc etc. But I say this simply because Oliver has only just turned four years old in the past couple of weeks. We thought Jack did well to pick up the ability to read quite early, but Oli seems to have a head start!
His pre-school teacher even took him out of his class and into another, for their teacher to asses Oli and his reading – they showed him various flashcards with single words on, no pictures, and Oli had to read the letters, form the words and pronounce them… which he did brilliantly. They were so happy, they gave him a sticker as a reward and was excited enough to tell Claire as she picked the boys up from school that day.
Good lad, Oli Riggs! My little star.
