Toddler learning - letters and numbers

Surely these days,grandtante the majority of children go to nursery school if only part time, and the nursery schools where I live are teaching the basics phonics.

GagaJo perhaps look online at letters and sounds phase one, this is the system used in EY settings

At age 2 and three quarters IMO it's a bit early to teach letter sounds. Many children of this age can't form words properly never mind analyse them into their separate sounds.
Better to label items in the home in clear letters first. ie a few whole words. Later start to introduce the separate sounds.
And definitely too early to introduce copy writing.
Similar with written numbers - start with bigger/smaller and evetually less/more. Then digits later
Read with him books with lots of pictures and a few words.
Language development is very important and is a foundation for other skills.

At age 2 and three quarters IMO it's a bit early to teach letter sounds. Many children of this age can't form words properly never mind analyse them into their separate sounds.

I'm not suggesting that the child analyses words into their sounds. All I am saying is that when 'teaching' the letters, instead of saying 'ay', apple, 'bee', baby etc. as people tend to do when pointing out letters to toddlers, just to refer to them by the sound they most commonly represent. It's 'pre-phonics', not phonics, and it saves possible confusion when they come to learn.

You see, I always worked with the children who found learning to read most difficult and it quite easy to trace faulty understanding back to early influences. Using letter 'sounds' rather than names won't hurt any children and may considerably help some.

Children's first babbling is in phonemes, so I don't think that pronouncing one in response to a letter is going to be difficult for them.. But it's not obligatory, just do it if they're capable.

Over the years I've seen so many posts from people claiming that they could read fluently at the age of 3. Clearly it's not a great problem...

I wouldn't label with words personally, whole word recognition is no great help when it comes to learning to read, but I don't suppose it does much harm...

DD started reading at 2 3/4. Like me she did it by having me read books to her, essentially the old popular Look-and-Say method.

Don't worry about 'home-schooling' your grandson when you return to England Gagajo; he will only just be three, and you are ideally placed to concentrate on all the pre-learning skills: speech and language, so important and improved by talking to an adult who listens to him and talks back; rhymes, songs,puppets, sharing and talking about books, particularly without words without words, talking about everything he does as he does it , any thing to develop language skills. Imaginative play, puzzles, games, jigsaws, shape and space toys, motor skills playing with plasticine, cutting, sticking, painting, lego, duplo and learning the correct pencil grip, so sadly neglected by early years; learning to dress and undress himself. Follow the lead of the nursery in phonics and number, but all the above skills are where you can really give him one to one attention and help him. And nothing wrong with television. watch it together and talk about it, then switch it off and do something else.

'Books without words'

We've been practising letter sounds with a bath alphabet for a while. All lower case. He enjoys the game.

Yes, eazybee, all learning thru play. But it helps me if I think 'maths', 'science' etc in my head.

M0nica

DD started reading at 2 3/4. Like me she did it by having me read books to her, essentially the old popular Look-and-Say method.

I strongly suspect that both you and she worked out the phonics for yourselves. A lot of children do, probably as many as 50%.

Memory for words as 'wholes' fails after about 2,500 - 3,000. An educated adult reading vocabulary comprises about 30,000 words...

Just for interest, how about 'reading' this word and noting how you do it:

Otorhinolaryngological

One thing I will bet any money on is that no-one will be able to just glance' at it and know what it 'says' ...(unless you already know it)

(If you know it already I can find another one....)

https://www.gransnet.com/uploads/talk/202101/medium-537859-pxl-20210115-161639996.jpg https://www.gransnet.com/uploads/talk/202101/medium-543497-pxl-20210115-161612415.jpg

We have these posters low down on the wall in the hall. The children love them and will study them for ages.
This afternoon a three year old has enjoyed sounding out the initial letter sounds and then we took it in turns to look for the same letter in the other words. Great fun!

I think learning songs and stories is a more useful skill. A wide ranging vocabulary is always a bonus!

A wooden jigsaw, paper and crayon and your time and attention is all you need. Count everything with him all of the time and by February he will be able to count to 20. Once he has mastered that, buy him a little note book and write 1 -20 inside using a single page for each number. When he counts anything show him the number written down. Come Easter ask him to find the number in the book. Once he manages that use a yellow felt tip and write the numbers on sheets of paper then let him copy over the top with a crayon. Jobs a good un. No great expense, no faff just plain simple straight forward teaching.

Hello Gaga yes. Maria Montessori was originally interested in “special needs” as it was. She soon discovered that the materials she was making were really great for younger children without additional needs and eventually it became a whole way of learning.

It is based very much on “doing” so you can see why it’s so great for tiny ones.

If you Google “Montessori free downloads” or similar there are lots out there (obviously you need to see what will work for you) but I know from experience that it is a really exciting way to help children learn.

The sandpaper letters are something I remember loving from being very very small myself.
There were also some lovely geometric shape sets which you could also use as templates for drawing, and later (maybe school age) Cuisenaire Rods and beads. SO lovely!

Anyone, especially those with an interest in early years should take a look.

MaizieD The interesting thing with DD is that it was all look and say and she got to a point where her memory could not cope with recognising anymore whole words and then there was a lapse in her reading while she figured out the phonics and then she took off again.

At that point I was active in helping her because there were a couple of wonderful Macdonald books fully of big pictures and sentences underneath describing what was in the picture, emphasising and highlighting particular phonic constructions. I left the books with her and she got on with it.

That's lovely, MOnica.

It's just such a shame that at least 50% of children can't do that. They need explicit teaching from the word go. And, until they start learning to read you have absolutely no idea which of the 50%s they're going to be.

I hasten to add that this doesn't detract from any achievement of real early reading in any way at all...

I was going to suggest the orchard games.
I love them.

Maizie Children learn in their own way and their own time and in a manner that suits them.

I am so worried about my GD she was 2 in January and is not speaking yet she makes sounds but doesn’t say any words at all.
She is very bright in other ways loves flash cards and knows all the pictures on them and most of the numbers too but just doesn’t say anything. She understands every word you say too.

My daughter is also very worried of course and has an appointment with a speech therapist next week. GD loves books has been read to she was months old. And we speak to her and play with her all the time.

Has anyone got any experience of this too.

Glasgowgal, my second son remained mute until he was two-ish - his chatterbox elder brother did all his talking for him. We had an speech therapy appointment set up. Then one day when brother was at nursery, I had second son in high chair behind me while I loaded the dishwasher. Suddenly a clear voice behind me said “Mummy, please can I have another bit of toast?”

I jumped out of my skin. Turns out second son had been talking fluently to big brother in bed at night, but neither of them had given me any indication that he could talk.

Sometimes toddlers just don't need to speak. Especially if they are the only child around.

Try giving her choices all the time (without showing them to her) e.g. do you want your red socks or yellow socks, apple or banana. She is still quite young and hopefully the speech therapist will put your minds to rest.

Gagajo as he has delayed seech has anyone considered teaching him Makaton? My GCs learned this at nursery because it is becomng accepted as a way of encouraging early communication for all children not just those with speech and language difficulties. There are some lovely on-line videos Makaton with Lucinda -how to sign "dinner" www.youtube.com/watch?v=8tGXBLTZtD0

Actually Marie, I see and read in ‘whole’ words all the time. The only time I employ phonic skills is if I have to read aloud. With your word, I have memorised the whole thing and could reproduce it and recognise it again but I don’t have a clue how to pronounce it. Didn’t bother. Just put the whole thing in my head in a second.

?

Maizie.

Autocorrect gave me Maisie, Naize, and a couple of others but I knew they were wrong on sight..

schools took a very dim view of children learning to read and write at home, as a lot of them had been badly taught and it took ages to correct their faults
If children can read and write, I don't see where the 'faults' are, that need correcting. I think it's more a case of teachers labelling themselves 'professionals' and getting irritated when they find that parents can do the job of teaching reading and writing with no particular training and with equal success.

This puzzle helped my DGD with numbers and colours and they enjoyed doing it over and over again.

www.ebay.co.uk/p/1394356555

My DC also had an old-fashioned wooden abacus:
www.amazon.co.uk/Melissa-Doug-493-Wooden-Abacus/dp/B00005BVRQ/ref=asc_df_B00005BVRQ/?hvlocphy=1007432&linkCode=df0&hvptwo&psc=1&psc=1&hvnetw=g&hvadid=226614177296&hvpone&hvlocint&th=1&hvpos&hvdev=t&hvdvcmdl&hvqmt&tag=gransnetforum-21&hvtargid=pla-369216602291&hvrand=11995356660828569287