Finding CVC reading books

There are several this afternoon geekese I reported them a little while ago. Different posters touting the same book.

Oops, just realised I was suckered into one of numerous threads revived as an advertising gimmick. Sorry.

My kids started off with repeatedly reading books with sing-song rhythms - ‘Each Peach Pear Plum’, ‘Bathwater’s Hot’ - and after a while they would repeat every second line. My grandchildren have all started off that way. Along the way, we looked at letter and word shapes, tracing them with their fingers and matching them with some old flash cards I found in the loft. We used phonics a bit, and had fun recognising letters and sounds on shop signs, newspaper headlines and food labels as well as in books. Somewhere along the way, they discovered they could actually read, and from then, there was no stopping them.

I wasn’t ‘teaching children to read’, I was just incorporating text into their lives. One they could read, we had an old set of Griffin Pirate Stories readers which they enjoyed, which over the series develop a literary style - the later books are actually quite beautiful to read. Alas, they are no longer in print, but you can sometimes pick them up in charity shops or online. We had loads of fiction and non-fiction children’s books, not just cute picture books and reading books, but also dozens of old Ladybird books, including fairy stories, history, Bible stories and ‘how to..’ books, all bought in boxes for pennies at jumble sales. They grew out of picture books very quickly as their imagination and reading developed, and moved on to Enid Blyton novels, Roald Dahl and similar. They all loved the ‘Fudge’ books by Judy Blume. (In fact, one son asked me a couple of weeks ago if I’d kept the Fudge books because he wanted to read them to his kids.)

Long after they could read for themselves, I always read them a chapter of a book as a bedtime story - we did the whole set of CS Lewis Narnia novels that way, and loads of children’s classics, including ‘The Wind in the Willows’ and ‘The Sword in the Stone’, E. Nesbitt’s books and ‘The Railway Children’. They all sat around with their hot chocolate at bedtime, with the youngest on my knee and the others grouped around, until the youngest was way too big to sit on anyone’s knee. It petered out when the youngest got to about 14 or 15.

The kids were also used to seeing me read for pleasure, for recipes for their favourite food, for instructions to assemble furniture and when I received letters from their Dad and grandparents. You can’t put ‘reading’ in a box as a skill to learn and then move on - it’s part of the day-to-day fabric of normal life, like talking or eating. Maybe that’s what’s wrong with methods for teaching children to read - the underlying assumptions about written language and about children are all wrong.

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They're the sort of thing I mean geekygran. I shall look into those further. Thanks

I'm a specialist reading tutor.

I recommend that you begin teaching your (grand)children to read before they start school and use synthetic phonics.

Children's first reading books for independent reading need to be phonically decodable - IMO the best ones are those by phonic books www.phonicbooks.co.uk and these start at CVC level

More decodable books series here: www.dyslexics.org.uk/decodable_books.htm

HTH

Why not ask the librarian at the local public library about books suitable for his age group? Or just let him browse for himself for something that arouses his interest.

My GS is now in Year 1 and finds reading boring - because it is the 'Here is the ball. The ball is red' kind of approach. He wants to read a story or some non fiction. His choice of a book from the school library was one on moths and butterflies which he's carried everywhere with him this weekend so far. There are learning to read books which have a very simple story in each little book, but I cannot remember what they are. Does anyone else know? DD has mentioned this to the teacher who is taking the request seriously so fingers crossed but in the meantime I'd like to at least get the name of this series. Oh my memory is getting worse and worse.........

My GS will go to school in French, also learning Dutch, and speaking English with me and with my DD when we are together. He will start school at 2 1/2, in a class Maternal where he will learn all the basic skills then start Primary age 6. We will definately be encouraged by the school to teach him at home, the old-fashioned 3Rs' are taught energetically here. Children leave school here at 18 and can stay on until 25 or even return until that age if it is felt it would assist them.

Also what you know and what you do are two different things..my 6 yr old DGD can spell kind orally if you ask her how to but when she writes it is still cinde!

There's more than one way to catch Prince Charming................

One of my 6 year old GDs still doesn't believe that Cinderella doesn't begin with S.....

I can only endorse what others have said! Let the lad enjoy any storybooks by listening to them, joining in the repeated phrases, follow with his finger (or yours) talk about it look at the pictures..have fun!! Phonics are important but are only one part of the reading process!

If he is interested in individual letters and the sounds they make just tell him!
My 3 1/2 DGD is at that stage at the moment and whilst playing a computer game was very cross to discover kite was spelled with a K and not a C!

In school teachers will begin with making sure children can hear/discriminate the phonemes and blend CVC words aurally & orally first before focusing on the letter (grapheme) by playing games etc. They will then use the letters SATPIN first when they get to introducing the letter/sound link. Often they will also teach the correct letter formation at this time.

People learn to read words in different ways. Decoding relies mainly on phonics but some words can't be decoded that way and have to be learned. Also we derive meaning from the rest of the sentence so if we don't know the word we can often work out what it is. Children's books also have a lot of illustrations which can be used to help work out some words. For example if the sentence is The dog fell in the pond the illustration could show that happening. So say the child is struggling with fell the first thing to try would be phonics but if that didn't work use the illustration. The child might choose the wrong word e.g. jumped. If that happens go back to the the beginning sound of the word. The child will then have another go.

We do this over and over when we read but because we've been doing it for such a long time it's become second nature and we don't even think about it. My husband is dyslexic and he has to resort to strategies much more often or the things he reads just don't make sense. He often reads g as j so he might read The boy opened the jate. Of course he knows this can't be right so he has learned to self correct. Basically he still does a version of what children have to do when learning.

I am not sure about the way they learn to read now, I know a seven year old who does not read as well as my DD did at three.

Learning to read can become a chore for some children. I didn't mean don't help them learn words if they're interested but there is more to reading than simply decoding. Lots of children and adults can decode but not have the faintest understanding of what they're reading. For example you will be able to decode chronosynclastic disinfibulation but do you know what it means? Synthetic phonics helps children to decode but understanding comes from discussion. That is where you come in. Parents and grandparents have time. They can discuss stories and non fiction. They are invaluable.

Sorry about satpin. I should have made it clear....s a t p i n....are the first sounds taught.

Some infant schools ask that children should be able to write their names before they come to school.

Thanks for all the advice. Sorry if I came across as a pushy grandmother. GS has been taught all the letters phonetically at nursery and worked the rest out for himself. I'm just trying to help mum and dad keep the reading going in the holidays.

The whole family apart from late dh were and are avid speed readers! This is how I manage to read all my files and read at least a couple of books a week!
It's a gift! Not anything to be proud of! I was born with it! I thank the supreme being!

One of my sons learnt to read at nursery school; the other didn't go to nursery school and wouldn't let me teach him. They both turned out to be excellent readers and both are still voracious readers. In other words, they levelled out and it made no difference that one could read earlier than the other.

My mother taught me and my brother to read before we started school! My children could also read! They wanted to. My mother to be fair was an infant teacher and a qualified remedial reading teacher. In fact when my mother moved down to here and offered to listen to the children reading , as a parent as I couldn't, originally she was looked at with askance! Six months later the remedial teacher was cut! Mother took over on a voluntary unpaid basis several days a week!
I know there were several parents in the town who were very grateful.
We did not get on as she was a very demanding woman, but I have to admire th work she did in the school!

Yes, a blotting paper reference is much more to my taste

Maybe that's why we "ping back" when we reach our senior years? Or, given that I often feel like piece of knicker elastic that has lost its stretch, I should blame my parents. I do in fact agree with you, but young children remind me of blotting paper, soaking up everything they are exposed to. It's lovely!

If a child learns the trick of reading before it goes to school, well and good, but there is no need to push it. Just enjoy looking at books together and reading stories. If a child looks at the book with you (both the writing and the pictures) as you read the story, it will learn an awful lot about how reading works. Watch a child's eyes when it is is looking at a book with someone who is telling the story – it's fascinating .

If your grandchild is already reading some words at four, humbert, he will have no trouble carrying on. As others have said, any suitable children's books will be fine; they don't have to be of one particular kind. Well, maybe they do, actually — one he enjoys rather than ones he doesn't enjoy.

Just by the way, for anyone who's interested, I hate the notion of stretching children as if they were elastic. I know what it's supposed to mean but the expression leaves me with an uncomfortable feeling.

What I was pointing out - or trying to.( "it's own sake")