Toddler learning - letters and numbers

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....)

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.

'Books without words'

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.

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.

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...

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.

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

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.

I love Orchard Toys NfkD. GS has a LOT of their jigsaws and he is starting to be old enough for their games too.

Melissa and Doug toys are good too.

Oh, and they also have free activity sheets you can download.

Our lot all enjoyed Orchard Toys. (Many have been stowed away as heirlooms when outgrown). And, a point in their favour, if you loose a piece from their games they will replace it free of charge (up to three times)! www.orchardtoys.com

He has the duplo train. I am making him laminated A5 numbers on a page, with various coloured 'dots'. 'Read' the number, count the dots and place on the page.

I like the sandpaper number / letter idea too.

His mum has bought him magnetic letters & numbers and I will add to it with the toy grannanannywanny suggested as well.

I might make him some flashcards too. He had ones that I had made to help him learn the names of things and to encourage his speech. It is also good to take screenshots on an iPad and to flick through those. But he is a bit past that now.

https://www.gransnet.com/uploads/talk/202101/medium-209845-number-puzzle.jfif https://www.gransnet.com/uploads/talk/202101/medium-865234-duplo.jpg

How about some wooden puzzles with number or letter shapes? They can be fun even if you don't push the educational bit. Duplo blocks as PaperMonster said, (we have the train-see photo) or how about watching the 'Numberblocks' programme on CBeebies?

Through most of my life as a school-child and later as a teacher, 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.

Ha ha

It works both ways, grandtanteJE65 . Sometimes they're very badly taught at school! I spent years helping 11+ yr olds who'd been taught reading rather badly in school...

grandtanteJE65 if a child wants to learn to read and count before they start school there is very little you can do to stop them. Both DH and I were fluent readers before we started school, just from having mothers (it was wartime) who read to us. It was the same with our children. Our son was actively uninterested in numbers until the day he walked round the supermarket reading all the numbers on the shelf and both children's approach to reading was similar.

I had very good relations with both children's primary school teachers, they had no difficulty in dealing with children coming to school with every level of ability from those who had never seen or held a book to those who could read fluently.

The following remark absolutely floored me Those who could read, write and count were bored at school for two or three years until the others caught up. I did not know teachers still thought like that. Again a good teacher should always be able to deal with a class whose abilities go from one end of the spectrum to the other.

My children both benefitted from excellent teachers who used their interests to give them more complicated and difficult tasks and exercises than others in the class.

They were not exceptional geniuses, just among the group that made the top 10% of the class they were in and such groups exist in every class in every school.

GagaJo

Why sandpaper NotSpagettic? Muscle memory?

That's right.

Sue Lloyd did something similar in Jolly Phonics.
I'm not sure how useful it is as you use different muscles when you write the letters with a pen/pencil, but at least it should help to instil the correct way to form the lower case letters.

I'd stress being particularly careful with the formation of b & d because those are the two that children get very badly confused (also p & q, but not quite so much). Letters should always be formed from left to right, so the order for forming it is ascender first, then the 'ball', whereas for d it is 'ball' first, then ascender. I have had so many Y7s who start both letters with the ascender and then have no idea which way to go next. It makes me so cross because they'd have no problem if they were properly taught from the first!

And all those little 'tricks' for eliminating b/d confusion don't really work because the child forgets them when they're concentrating on the content of what they're writing. The 'confusion' is a long instilled habit. We know how difficult it is to break habits...

Also, if forming or tracing letters try and get the child to say the main sound it represents as they do it.

Never teach letter names, they're not needed at this stage and it will get in the way when they start learning to read and spell. So, /b/ for 'baby, not /bee/ etc.

I'm not sure my grandson will be able to read early. We have a very big family history of dyslexia.

GS has delayed speech, which is an indicator that he will acquire literacy late, so want to encourage any interest he has shown. He has the 4 letters that make up his name in magnetised letters, and can put them in order unprompted, so I want to give him some other games things he can do too.

I don't have a lot of knowledge about how to help young children. Teenagers are my forte, but low ability students I have taught are best taught in 10 minute blocks. So far, that has worked OK with GS.

Children in lockdown need a LOT to keep them amused. I think anything that does that, that isn't TV is good.

It has become fashionable to let children learn numbers and letters as soon as they show an interest, which on the face of things is a good idea.

BUT what do the schools in your area think of it?

Through most of my life as a school-child and later as a teacher, 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.

Those who could read, write and count were bored at school for two or three years until the others caught up.

By that time most of the early starters had decided school was boring and stopped trying to learn.

Why sandpaper NotSpagettic? Muscle memory?

Montessori uses cut-out sandpaper letters and numbers so you can trace the shapes in order to form them correctly.
These are something you could make, glued onto card.

Haha, kircubbin, when I was teaching from home in lockdown 1, my GS would burst into the bedroom where I was working periodically and make an appearance, much to the delight of my Year 9 students in particular.

He did the same when I was in a meeting with my new head teacher and blew her a kiss, the charmer.

My 4 year old gs is enjoying his brothers home schooling!

My two loved the Ladybird 'all about' series that had number recognition and counting activities. They also loved those big very rough paper books with colouring, counting and number recognition pages. They would spend an hour at a time, just colouring and counting.

Take him shopping , again my two woud walk round reading the prices on things. When they were starting to read, car journeys consisted of them reading every road sign we went past.

Do they still have Flash Cards? Our youngest loved them, and learned very quickly.
Of course they may now be out of favour, I am not up to date with learning for little ones.