How many sight words should a 4 year old know

How To Use Sight Words To Foster A Love Of Reading

As a parent, you may have heard the term “sight words” but might not really know what it means. We read sight words every day without thinking about it. They are words like “the,” “he,” and “where,” for example, that are very common but not easy to sound out.

Learning sight words can boost your child’s reading skills and confidence. When you give your little one the resources they need to recognize sight words, they’ll be on the path to mastering — and enjoying — their reading journey!

In this article, we’ll talk about what sight words are and share some fun ways to use them to help kids learn to read.

Table of Contents

• What Are Sight Words?
• When Should Kids Learn Sight Words?
• Age-Appropriate Sight Words
• Fun And Easy Tips For Using Sight Words
• What To Do If Your Child Is Struggling
• Sight Words And Reading
• A Lifetime Of Reading

What Are Sight Words?

As we mentioned, sight words aren’t easy to sound out or decode, so we memorize them (or, in other words, recognize them by sight).

Once your child learns sight words, they won’t need to spend a lot of time trying to decipher these high-frequency words. This helps them improve their reading fluency and makes reading more fun.

After all, being able to quickly recognize sight words is one of the first steps to a lifetime of reading adventures!

Here are some examples of the simplest and most essential sight words:

• The
• Was
• Are
• Of
• To
• On
• Have
• What
• Said

As kids develop their reading skills, the list of words they recognize by sight will grow well beyond the one above. But giving them these words to start with can help boost their confidence and encourage them to learn more.

When Should Kids Learn Sight Words?

Most children — not all! — begin to master a few sight words (like is, it, my, me, and no) by the time they’re in Pre-K at four years old. Then, during kindergarten, children are introduced to anywhere from 20 to 50 sight words, adding to that number each year.

However, it’s important to mention that while some kids are ready for sight words before they turn four, others may not be ready until they’re five or older.

How can you tell if your child is ready to start memorizing sight words? Here are a few easy signs to watch for in your little one. They:

• Show an interest in books
• Recognize some or all letters
• Can hear the sounds in words (such as knowing when words rhyme)
• Express an eagerness to learn how to read

If your child isn’t quite there yet, that’s OK! Give the process — and your little one — time and grace. And remember that every child learns in their own way and in their own timing!

If you get started but your child seems a bit discouraged, consider trying some simple, yet fun, approaches to introducing sight words. Sight words hopscotch, memory games, and other similar activities are great ways to engage different learning styles.

Finally, if your little one still seems to be struggling, that’s OK, too! Their teacher can be a great resource offering ideas for tackling these special words.

Age-Appropriate Sight Words

Some sight words are more difficult than others, meaning different levels of sight words are appropriate for different ages.

To help you easily keep them straight, there are two common lists that break down which words are best to introduce at which age: The Dolch Word List (also called The Dolch 220) and The Fry Word List.

We recommend starting with The Dolch 220. Made up of the most commonly used words in the English language, this list is ideal for helping your four to eight-year-old develop a love for reading!

The Dolch Sight Words List

Edward William Dolch was a professor who wrote several children’s books with his wife. In the 1930s, he researched and discovered the 220 words that were most frequently used in the English language.

These words were given the title “Sight Words” and the list was born. Later, he compiled a list of the 95 most common nouns in English, bringing the number of sight words in his lists to 315.

To make it easy to choose which words to introduce based on a child’s age, the Dolch high-frequency word list is broken up into five groups: Pre-K (Pre-Primer), Kindergarten (Primer), First Grade, Second Grade, and Third Grade.

You can choose which group to start introducing to your child based on their grade level, or you can work with whichever one you feel they’re ready for. There are different ways to begin your child’s reading adventure!

For example, if your child is a kindergartener, according to the Dolch list, they might be ready to start learning some of these words:

• All
• Ride
• Saw
• There
• Four
• He
• Our

The Dolch Sight Words are often used in schools, so your child’s teacher will most likely provide a list of sight words to help you get started.

But if your child isn’t yet in school or you’re unsure where to start, our Learning Quiz is a great way to help identify your child’s reading stage! From there, investigate our games and practice menus in the HOMER Learn & Grow app for sight word games and activities for your child.

Fun And Easy Tips For Using Sight Words

Now that you know what sight words are and why they’re important, let’s dive into some specific tips to help you teach your child to read these words.

1) Ease Into The Adventure

Our first tip is to start slow. When introducing sight words, begin with three to five words and build from there. If your child seems a bit overwhelmed, you can always take it at their pace and reduce the number of words.

The goal is to help them learn a handful of sight words at a time. Start with a few words and, once your child can recognize these words on sight, try adding more!

For example, if they have a list of five words and have mastered three of them, try including three new ones so they’re still working on no more than five at a time.

2) Involve The Senses

Next, get as many of their senses involved as you can!

Giving your child the opportunity for fun, hands-on learning helps them connect their brain and body, which can reinforce what the word sounds and looks like.

When you introduce a word, write it on a bright note card and put it in a place where they can see it throughout the day so that when you pass by the word with your child, you can point it out to them.

Say the word often in your everyday conversations so they can hear it out loud, and have them write the word in sand or flour using their fingers so they can touch it.

You can also use shaving cream to make involving their sense of touch even more fun! To try this activity, simply spread some shaving cream thinly over a cookie tray and let your child write the word in it.

By letting your child interact with each word in various ways, you’ll help cement it into their brain. So break out the playdough and challenge them to build each letter and put them in order. Or pour some salt into a baking pan so they can write in it.

Have your child try to spell the word aloud while hopping on one foot. Then, see if they can spell it with their eyes closed.

Change things up and keep the activities light and fun to help your child master the words!

3) Try Silly Spelling

Humor can help kids remember things in a different way. So don’t be afraid to get your child giggling as you practice.

For this activity, say each word once, spell it, and then say it again. Then, have your child repeat what you just said back to you while looking at the word.

To make sure your child is connecting the sound of the word with the written word, give them a notecard to look at while the two of you spell and repeat the word.

To amp up the fun, get creative with it and use silly voices each time, encouraging your child to copy you. They will love having some fun, and you’ll love helping them learn sight words while going about your busy day!

4) Play A Word-Find Game

Finally, another great way to help your child become familiar with their sight words is by making a game of finding the words in a book.

To do this activity, choose one word to write on a card and let your child study it a bit. Once they’ve looked at it a while, challenge them to find it in a book. You may even have them find the same word five times in one book to see how useful sight words are.

This is an easy, fun, and effective way to help your child with sight words while going about your day because you can send them on a word hunt while you’re checking things off your to-do list!

Another way to incorporate this new word-finding skill into your day is to pause while you’re reading aloud whenever you come across a sight word that your child knows. Then, have them look at the word and read what it says.

This process helps them see what the word looks like in context. It also encourages young readers to listen and follow the story, which is an essential literacy skill.

Tip: Avoid doing this too often or it may turn what should be a fun read-aloud time into a chore for your child.

5) Sight Word Slap

Sight word games reinforce words. They encourage your child to practice what they’ve been learning in a way that doesn’t feel like work.

Here’s another fun game you can play. You’ll need a fly swatter, a marker, and a stack of index cards.

Before you play, write a single sight word on each card. Make sure to pick the ones your child is currently working on or has already mastered. This slapping game can be a fun way to review words your child already knows.

Spread the sight word cards out around the room, word side up. Then, call out one of the words. Have your child look for the card with that word on it. Once they find it, they hit it with the flyswatter, bring you the card, and read the word aloud.

If they misread a word, put it back out into the room and try it again later in the game. If they get it right, put the card in a stack.

Repeat this process until your child has successfully read all of the words.

6) Building Sight Words

If your child enjoys playing with building blocks, such as LEGOs or MEGA Bloks, they’ll enjoy this game.

Before you begin, gather a dry-erase marker, baby wipes to use as an eraser, and a stack of blocks. You’ll also need a list of sight words.

Pro Tip: While we’ve had good luck getting the marker off of MEGA Bloks with a baby wipe, you might want to test yours to ensure you have the same results. If not, you’ll probably want to skip this game. Or, you could put a piece of painter’s tape on each block and write on that instead.

Once you’ve tested, write a single letter on one side of each block with the dry-erase marker. Make sure you have enough of each letter to make the words on your list. You’ll likely need more than one of some letters.

When your blocks are ready, call your child over. Ask them to identify the letters on each block. This step is a quick way to practice letter identification and ensure that they can clearly see the letters.

To play, ask your child to spell one of the sight words from your list by using the letter blocks. Have them set the blocks side-by-side to spell the word. For example, if they’re trying to spell “away,” they’d need two “A” blocks, a “W,” and a “Y.”

Once they spell the word correctly, ask them to read it. Then, spread the blocks back out to use in the next round.

When you’ve practiced all of the words on your list, have your child help you erase the letters with the wipes.

7) Make Your Own Books

While the reading games above can help your child memorize sight words, they’re often reading the words out of context. This can make it challenging for your child to remember them when they see the sight words surrounded by other words in a sentence or on the page.

To help your child learn to read sight words in context, make little books together! This activity allows you to customize the words your child practices. For example, you can include their name, names of family members, and various other words they can read.

Enlist your young reader to help with the writing process. Start by talking about all of the words they can read now and asking them to brainstorm some sentences that combine those words.

Be their scribe and write each sentence on a separate piece of paper. After you’ve written the words, ask your child to illustrate the sentence. Remind them that pictures can add clues to help them read if they get stuck, so the illustrations should match the text.

Encourage your writer to keep thinking of sentences. When you have a few pages done, staple them together to make a book. Then, have your child read the book to you. After they practice a few times, have them share their project with someone else.

If you’re having trouble figuring out what to write, here are a few simple sentences that use sight words. Hopefully, they’ll give you a starting point:

• I see the big red ball.
• Do you like my new dress?
• He is funny.
• We looked at a dog.
• Can you play at my house?
• Mom is cooking dinner.
• Dad is reading a book.

At first, don’t worry about the story making sense. Remember that the goal here is to practice reading sight words. So if the pages don’t flow together to create a complete story, that’s OK!

What To Do If Your Child Is Struggling

Sometimes, no matter how hard you try to help your child learn sight words, they still have trouble reading the words. If this is the case, don’t worry! Just take a step back and reevaluate your approach.

Here are a few things you can try.

Change Your Routine

Reading practice can sometimes start to feel dull or mundane. If your child usually does well but is having a hard time lately, try switching things up a bit.

For example, if you usually practice sight words after lunch, try doing it first thing in the morning. Or if you typically sit down at the kitchen table to work on them, try standing up or doing a movement-centered game instead.

These simple changes might not seem important, but they can make a big difference to your child.

Re-Evaluate Your Child’s Readiness

Even if you think your child is old enough to read certain words, they might not be developmentally prepared. Review the list at the beginning of this post to see if your child is ready.

If they aren’t, work on phonemic awareness activities for a bit. Then, come back to sight words after their reading skills are a little more developed.

Use Different Words

Children go through different stages of reading development. Early readers often use the first and last letters of the word to provide clues. Then, they’ll try to guess based on that information. For example, if they see the word “dog,” they might read “dig,” ignoring the vowel in the middle.

As your child develops a better understanding of letters and sounds, they’ll apply that knowledge to their reading. Until then, it’s best to make sure the words you’re practicing don’t all look alike.

So if you’re working on the word “on,” don’t also practice “no.” These two words share the same letters and can confuse young readers.

Again, as your child develops reading skills, they’ll be able to tackle similar words better. But, for now, try to work on dissimilar ones.

Slow It Down

As mentioned above, you can’t be in a hurry when introducing sight words. But for some kids, two or three words a week can be too many. Try slowing down even more if the words don’t seem to stick in your child’s memory.

Pick one word to practice each week. Then, add a different one the next week. Often, simply changing the pace can be enough to help your child begin to master the words and gain confidence as a reader.

Use Tech

The HOMER Learn & Grow app has several games to help children practice essential sight words. Letting your child play for a little bit each day can help move the needle when it comes to reading.

Ask For Help

If you’ve tried all of the above and your child is still having trouble, it might be time to seek out some professional help.

A tutor or teacher can assess your child’s skills and give you tailored advice on how to best help them. They might also be able to recommend some great resources to help your child learn to read sight words.

Sight Words And Reading

Sight words are a great foundation for learning to read. As your child adds more sight words to their reading vocabulary, they’ll start to read with more speed and ease and, as a result, will begin to feel more confident.

Think of every sight word as a building block. When you stack the blocks, a firm foundation is set. Your child can then build on this base, adding more words, more skills in sounding out words, and more fluency. And their love of reading will grow along with their skills!

A Lifetime Of Reading

To sum up, sight words are common words recognized by sight rather than by sounding them out. You can start teaching sight words to your child as early as four years old, but the exact timing will depend on when your young learner is ready.

There are fun and simple ways to start working on sight words with your child at home. It doesn’t have to be boring! The sky’s the limit when it comes to how you can teach sight words to your beginning reader.

Learning sight words can even feel like play if you change things up every so often. If you’re looking for ideas, check out our kid-tested games and activities. And for more fun ideas on how to use sight words, take a look at 13 Highly Effective And Fun Sight Words Games To Help Your Kids Learn.

Whether your child is just starting to learn their letters or is already recognizing some sight words, we can help make learning to read fun! To encourage your child’s love of reading, HOMER uses their interests to curate stories just for them.

We have over 200 animated and interactive stories and songs for them to choose from. They can read along or read on their own for an experience that’s both fun and educational!

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Sight Words FAQs | Sight Words: Teach Your Child to Read

It is much better for a child to have solid knowledge of 50 words than to kind of know 300 words.

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Child 4 years old ✔️ What should be able and know

Accumulated experience is not only about mature adults. A four-year-old child also has his own - albeit small, but noticeable in comparison with previous periods of development - life experience. At 4 years old, the child is still a baby, especially in the eyes of his parents: he talks funny, is surprised by the new and asks a lot of questions. But growing up is noticeable even in the appearance of a four-year-old. Children's swelling is smoothed out, and the child begins to resemble a small adult.

If the developmental norms for three-year-old children are more variable, then for four-year-olds, these norms are already outlined quite clearly. Knowing what a child should be able to do at 4 years old, parents will be able to track and correct possible deviations.

Content:

• Basic knowledge and skills in 4 years
• Physical Development Standards
  • Differences between boys and girls
  • Weight and height
  • Physical skills
• Motor skills
• Fine motor skills
• Sensory Development and Dental Care
• Speech of a 4 year old child
  • If the child does not speak or does not speak well?
  • Second language learning
• Socialization: communication, emotions
• Psychological condition
• Intellectual development
• Cognitive development
• Life skills
• Daily routine and childcare
• When should I worry about a child's development?
• How to help a child's development?

Basic knowledge and skills at 4 years old

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What a child should be able to do at four years old - basic knowledge and skills:

• good control over your body: move confidently and navigate in space;
• be able to count up to five and know what numbers up to five look like;
• speaking well enough: speech should become clearer compared to the age of three;
• have self-service skills;
• to understand some social norms: for example, to distinguish good deeds from bad ones.

Norms of physical development

Between the ages of three and four, the child does not grow as fast as at an earlier age. But acquired physical and motor skills are honed, and new ones appear. At the age of four, differences in the physical abilities of boys and girls become noticeable.

Differences between boys and girls

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Although the weight and height of four-year-old children of different sexes is still the same on average, the difference in physical development is already clearly visible: good to ride a bike.

Researchers studying the thinking patterns of preschool children found that this difference in development between boys and girls is related to the structure of the brain. Four-year-old girls have a well-developed left hemisphere of the brain, which is responsible for developed intelligence and fluent speech.

With age, intellectual differences between children of different sexes are erased, and physical differences become even more noticeable.

Weight and height

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The average height of children at the age of four is 102-103 centimeters. The average weight is 16-18 kilograms. There may be deviations up or down from the average height and weight, depending on hereditary factors and the lifestyle of a particular child.

If your baby is less than 94 centimeters at 4 years old, or weighs less than 12 or more than 25 kilograms, it may be worth changing the daily routine and nutrition after consulting a pediatrician.

The norm of weight and height specifically for your son or daughter can be calculated as follows: in the interval between three and four years, the child should grow by 6-7 centimeters, and the weight should increase by 1-3 kilograms.

Physical skills

Physical skills that most four-year-olds have:

• confidently handle a tricycle, a scooter;
• eat entirely on their own, using cutlery deftly and appropriately;
• are able to handle small details of objects: they correctly compose multi-level pyramids, assemble construction sets and puzzles according to instructions or with the help of an adult.

Motor skills

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The four-year-old's coordination develops better, acquired motor skills are fixed and new ones appear:

• can jump high and far, can somersault;
• tries to hit the target with the ball, catches and holds the ball with both hands;
• standing on one leg, keeps balance for at least 10 seconds, makes several jumps on one leg;
• becomes quite flexible, easily tilting the body from a standing or sitting position, for example, in order to put on shoes;
• can walk on tiptoe;
• dresses and undresses without the help of an adult, or with a little help if you need to deal with difficult closures or laces.

Fine motor skills

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The formation of a baby's speech, the correct development of thinking and memory depend on well-developed fine motor skills. It's good if by the age of four a child has the following fine motor skills:

• colors pictures without going beyond the outline;
• tries to lead the pencil evenly when drawing in dots, does not take his hand off the sheet of paper;
• outlines samples, stencils with a pencil;
• launches the top;
• folds fingers to show shapes, such as "flashlight";
• laces his own shoes, or at least tries to cope with the laces;
• strings buttons or beads with large holes on the thread;
The
• cuts out paper figures fairly evenly with scissors.

If your child does not yet master each of these skills, it is easy to help him: learn how to tie shoelaces together, play with beads, show how figures from fingers are folded.

Sense organs development and dental care

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At 4 years old, a child develops almost the same sharp vision as adults. Four-year-olds are rarely ready to read, but it is already possible to introduce the baby to letters. The main thing is to choose books, cards and other manuals where the letters are printed in large print - so children's eyesight will not strain too much.

The hearing of children is already fully developed at the age of four. Improving sense of smell : the child senses and identifies complex odors. Skin retains sensitivity to cold, the baby feels the heat just like adults. Children at the age of four feel the taste of food almost like adults, but with a slight difference: in a multi-component dish, the child mainly distinguishes the main component, poorly recognizing the flavors of the other components.

Four year olds already have 16-20 milk teeth . Due to the fact that milk teeth are much more vulnerable than permanent teeth, you need to carefully monitor the hygiene of the child's oral cavity: teach the baby to brush his teeth regularly, treat problem teeth in time. Keeping milk teeth healthy is very important: early removal of milk teeth can cause improper jaw formation and lead to other problems. So, in children who have lost milk teeth early, facial features may be distorted.

Read also Why is it important to take care of milk teeth? All about children's dental problems.

The speech of a child at 4 years old

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The passive vocabulary of a child at 4 years old is 3000 words: this includes those words that the baby actively uses in speech, and those whose meaning he knows, but rarely used in speech. Passive vocabulary includes, for example, obsolete words that are often found in fairy tales: plow, upper room, stupa and the like.

A four-year-old child's active vocabulary includes as many words as he needs to communicate with others - usually about 1000 words.

If the child does not speak or does not speak well?

A child at the age of four years can coherently tell how the day went, uses sentences of eight words or more in his speech, clearly describes the objects he has seen.

The development of speech in four-year-old children may differ - girls usually speak smartly, it is more difficult for boys to choose the right words. But if the child does not speak at all or distorts the words, it is worth contacting pediatricians.

Lack of coherent speech at 4 years of age may indicate mental retardation, hearing problems, severe stress. A pediatric neurologist, an otolaryngologist and a speech therapist will help parents deal with the reason for the child's silence.

Learning a second language

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English or another foreign language courses offer to start learning a second language from the age of four. At this age, children easily memorize foreign names of objects and phenomena and do not hesitate to make mistakes.

But it is desirable that the child already speaks Russian well enough before starting to learn a second language - otherwise serious problems with the pronunciation of foreign words are inevitable, which will later be difficult to correct.

Socialization: communication, emotions

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At the age of 4, the baby knows and accepts the norms of behavior in society. In communication with peers, a four-year-old learns to share, to fulfill his role in the game, to recognize good and bad deeds. The child is increasingly striving to communicate with peers, gradually separating from their parents. True, there are exceptions: when the baby does not want to play with other children and it is more interesting for him to spend time alone. Such behavior is a variant of the norm and indicates the characteristics of the character of the child.

In communication with adults, a well-socialized child at the age of 4 follows the rules of etiquette: he addresses himself as “you” and by his first name and patronymic, follows the rules of behavior in kindergarten or in another institution. By the age of four, a kid should know that you can trust only familiar adults, and you should not talk to strangers and go somewhere.

The spectrum of emotions of four-year-old children is quite wide: they are able to recognize the emotions of other people, restrain their own emotions, actively use facial expressions and gestures to express feelings.

A four-year-old needs a personal space - it can be a separate room or a play corner - where he feels like a master. Invasion of personal space without permission, even from close people, the child can perceive painfully.

Psychological state

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Four-year-old children do not feel fear well - the task of parents is to tell their son or daughter about possible dangers: about potentially dangerous household appliances, about homeless animals, about walking alone.

Normally, a psychologically developed child at the age of four should:

• take into account the assessment of his behavior by significant adults: parents, caregivers;
• to be as independent as possible;
• to be able to serve themselves in accordance with age.

Intellectual development

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Intellectual development can be considered appropriate for the age of four if the child has the following skills:

• knows his first and last name, parents' first and last names, his address;
• concentrates on the same activity for 10 minutes or more;
• knows and names at least seven colors;
• remembers the general plot and details of a story or fairy tale, can retell a short text;
• distinguishes and names seasons and times of day.

Four-year-old children, if adults are involved with them, already have knowledge of the world around them, elementary mathematics, music, drawing, construction.

The world around

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A 4-year-old child knows about the world around:

• names of household items, details of these items, their purpose, for example: cup - cup handle - drink from a cup;
• names of some domestic and wild animals, trees and flowers, finds them in pictures;
• features of common professions: teacher, doctor, salesperson;
• names and differences of tastes: sweet, salty, bitter, sour;
• what are the names of other close relatives, in addition to mom and dad: grandfather, grandmother, sister, brother.

Mathematics

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Four-year-old's knowledge of elementary mathematics:

• distinguishes between "a lot" and "little";
• knows geometric shapes: circle, square, triangle, oval, rectangle;
• distinguishes between right and left side;
• is oriented in space: knows where is the top, where is the bottom, and where are the edges;
• compares the sizes of different objects.

Music

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Development of a 4-year-old child in the field of musical creativity:

• taps the rhythm to the beat of favorite melodies;
• tries out children's songs;
• determines the mood and tempo of the music: happy or sad, fast or slow.

Drawing

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In the field of visual arts, four-year-olds can:

• coloring pages carefully;
• use different drawing tools: pencils, felt-tip pens, brushes;
• schematically depict people, animals, plants.

Construction

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At the age of four, the imagination is already well developed, and children master some construction skills:

• they come up with the shape of the building and build it from blocks or other materials;
• know how to carefully cut with scissors;
• learn to work with natural materials.

Cognitive development

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At the age of 4, the baby tends to do a lot of things by himself, thanks to which his cognitive abilities are intensively developed. The abilities of children attending a kindergarten or other preschool institution usually develop a little faster than those of home children - communication with peers and regular classes with teachers positively affects the formation of basic cognitive abilities: memory, attention, thinking.

Read also Is it time for kindergarten? When is the best time to give up a child and what a parent needs to know.

Memory

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Four-year-olds gradually learn to "manage" their memory. They already know how to memorize not only what is interesting, but also what is important to remember: for example, a home address, a poem for a holiday in kindergarten.

The child's ability to describe the past day, starting from the morning, indicates the correct development of memory. If during such a story the child is asked to describe in more detail a specific event of the past day, the child will remember this event and tell about it in more detail.

Attention

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Children's attention is closely related to memory. At 4 years old, children can direct their attention to objects that are not interesting to them at the request of an adult - this is how voluntary attention is formed. It is still difficult for a four-year-old kid to concentrate on several things at the same time, but sometimes he succeeds. Attention becomes tenacious: the child can devote quite a lot of time to an exciting activity without being distracted.

Thinking

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The process of thinking in four-year-olds no longer occurs only through actions, as at an earlier age, but also through images. The kid begins to draw conclusions about objects and phenomena, not interacting with them directly, but, for example, seeing in the picture.

Thinking develops normally at the age of four if it can:

• find differences in two similar images;
• find an extra object among objects that have a common feature: for example, a wild animal among domestic animals, a tree among flowers;
• according to the description of the narrator, guess the object or phenomenon he has guessed.

Household skills

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Four-year-olds are partially self-supporting: dressing and undressing, using the toilet carefully, washing and brushing their teeth. They are well oriented in their home, they know where specific things should be.

At the age of 4, the child himself strives to master new skills, and parents can teach him new skills in everyday life:

• make the bed;
• take dirty clothes to the laundry;
• to keep order in a small area of ​​the house, for example, in the bathroom.

Daily routine and childcare

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Sample daily routine for a four year old:

⠀
If the child does not attend kindergarten, at the age of 4 he can refuse daytime sleep.

Four-year-olds need certain care from adults:

• remind your child of the importance of personal hygiene;
• take longer walks in fine weather;
• include hardening procedures in the daily routine: air and sun baths, rubdowns.

When should you worry about your child's development?

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Features of a child that at the age of four may indicate a developmental delay:

• cannot concentrate on one activity even for a few minutes;
• does not control emotions, outbreaks of aggression occur;
• does not play with toys and is not interested in them;
• does not use complex sentences in speech, generally finds it difficult to express thoughts orally;
• is too mobile or, conversely, very slow.

If you notice these symptoms in your child, consult your local pediatrician.

How to help a child's development?

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Activities to help your 4 year old develop properly:

1. Simple physical and chemical experiments. For example, with water freezing in the cold, with mixing settled water with ink.
2. Learning new mathematical concepts: "equal", "wide-narrow", "low-high".
3. Reading children's books, retelling their fragments. Retellings can start with one paragraph, over time, the baby will be able to retell the whole chapter.
4. Applications and modeling.
5. Age-appropriate sports: skiing, swimming, running.

Games

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Games for the development of memory, attention and thinking of four-year-olds:

1. Any role-playing games that allow children to use their imagination and imagine themselves in a new role. Such games can be improvised or organized: children can play the classic "daughters-mothers" themselves or, under the guidance of an adult, play according to a pre-thought-out plot, for example, "One Day at School" or "At the Doctor's Appointment".
2. Games for the development of emotional intelligence. Ask the child to emotionally depict different moods: show a very tired person, a gloomy cloud, a smiling sun.
3. The game "Think of another name" perfectly develops children's imagination. Invite the child to come up with other names for familiar items: a spoon is a “porridge picker”, boots are “armor from dirt”, rags for wiping dust are a “weapon for cleanliness”.
4. Didactic games, age-appropriate: sorters, puzzles, developing cards.
5. Blind drawing. The child draws without opening his eyes, and then comes up with what the resulting confusion could mean.

Despite noticeable maturation, the main occupation for a four-year-old child is playing. Try to include game moments in different life situations - even the process of dressing can be arranged as a fun game. Without feeling pressure and demands, your child will develop on time and at a pace that is comfortable for him!

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My child does not want to read - what if he has dyslexia?

Olga Azova, Director of Logomed Prognosis Medical Center, Candidate of Pedagogical Sciences.

– What is dyslexia?

– Dyslexia is a partial impairment of the reading process caused by various reasons, including those caused by the immaturity or impairment of higher mental functions.

Often dyslexia is mixed, when the child has different types of reading disorders. This happens if the child before school had severe speech disorders, or he was silent for a long time, or these are combined disorders in the structure of other defects (with cerebral palsy, various syndromes).

If the child is physiologically and mentally healthy, studies according to the general education program, the school speech therapist deals with the problem. If dyslexia is associated with problems of the physical and mental health of the child, then other specialists should be involved in the work - a child neurologist, psychologist, neuropsychologist, massage therapist.

– Very often on various sites dedicated to dyslexia, you can see translations of foreign articles or materials based on a foreign approach to the problem. How does the foreign approach differ from the Russian one?

- This question is very important. For example, I tell students about this at lectures and even included this question in the exam papers. Moreover, participating in international conferences on dyslexia, I am more and more convinced of the importance and correctness of the domestic approach in interpreting the mechanisms of dyslexia.

Speaking about the diagnosis of dyslexia, the Russian school of speech therapy very consistently paints the mechanism of disorders, which we talked about above. Among these disorders there is a special type - "optical dyslexia": difficulties in mastering the image of a letter, mixing graphically similar letters, their interchanges (Z-V, Z-E, P-B, T-G, etc.). Letters and lines “dance” in a child, as if he does not see letters, he may not perceive some font, spaces, transition from one line to another, letters merge, stick together, look in different directions, and other similar problems.

Foreign specialists, speaking of dyslexia, most often have in mind only this, its optical variety. And here we must understand: the condition of children with such a problem, even with all its complexity, is generally much easier, because they have no problems with the development of speech and the associated mental retardation.

Sometimes, on the contrary, they even begin to talk about the peculiarity and genius of such children: their optics are bad, and everything else, perhaps, is compensatory - perfect. Some of it is a myth, but some of it is true. Among the children who underwent correction with me, there were those who had a great penchant for drawing and music.

As a rule, children with optical dyslexia, in addition to working with a speech therapist, need to consult both a psychologist and a neuropsychologist.

You may need to consult a neurologist, who can offer both massage and exercise therapy, cerebellar stimulation in rehabilitation activities to help develop basic reading functions.

Russian - great, powerful, terribly complex

Also, regarding the difference between domestic and foreign approaches, we must remember that we are the owners of a very beautiful language, which is included in the top three most difficult languages ​​in the world . Many languages ​​of the world are not so complex, there is not such a multi-stage grammar, a limited number of cases and genders, which means there is no variability in endings. And what about our participles and gerunds, phonemic language processes that gave us the beauty of the language, but at the same time problems!

We have paronyms, synonyms, quasi-homonyms - a lot of words that differ from each other by one sound. Many languages ​​in the world simply do not know this problem, they do not divide sounds according to deafness-voicedness, hardness-softness, hissing-whistling and various sonoras.

Therefore, our domestic approach to dyslexia is wider - and concerns language problems, the formation of mental functions: phonemic perception, phonemic analysis and synthesis, underdevelopment of the lexical and grammatical structure of speech, mnestic and receptive processes, and, of course, visual analysis and synthesis, spatial representations.

– Is it possible to recognize dyslexia before a child starts learning to read? What features in his behavior will help alert?

– In order to understand whether a child will have problems with reading, it is necessary to assess the child's health in general: his physical and psycho-speech development, the ability to use different types of memory - all this is easily checked before school.

Every problem has roots. Let's consider various ways of diagnosing problems that can later lead to the development of dyslexia:

1. If a child has speech disorders, he goes to a speech therapist. The speech therapist also looks at whether the child has impairments in phonemic hearing, analysis and synthesis, understanding, whether the dictionary is broken and whether there are agrammatisms (incorrect formation of words and their forms), how well coherent speech is developed. It is in the classes that develop speech that the speech therapist also conducts the prevention of reading disorders, especially those types that are associated specifically with speech.
2. In the art classes and when using any kind of manual labor, a good teacher will notice that the child has poorly developed fine motor skills (cannot cut, sculpt, stick, lace, fasten buttons). For writing, calligraphy, it is very important to be able to perform small precise actions. They are specially trained. I recommend these exercises every day.
3. If a child goes to school, he must be able to ride a two-wheeled bicycle - the functions of writing and reading require coordination and coherence.
4. Poor mastery of rhythm can complicate the assimilation of words with a complex syllabic structure, which means that it needs to be developed - dancing, music or more specialized procedures such as an interactive metronome will help.
5. Reading requires well-formed visual-motor and auditory-motor coordinations in order to be able to see, hear, speak at the same time - this is what is important when reading.
6. The child should be able to remember and, if necessary, retell what he has read.
7. It is necessary to understand which hand the child has - leading, with which hand he will write.

– Is left-handedness in itself a reason to check a child with a speech therapist?

- Yes. Speech therapists, psychologists, neurophysiologists and neuropsychologists often pay attention not only to the dominant hand, but also to the leg and eye. Lateralization is important because there are letters in Russian that face right or left, are symmetrical vertically and horizontally, or not at all symmetrical, and a left-handed child may not learn directions well.

In fact, the vast majority of left-handers and ambidexters (people who equally use both hands) have no special features other than the dominant hand. The left hemispheric location of the center of speech is observed in 95% of right-handed people and in 70% of left-handed people. And only 15% of left-handers have the speech center in the right hemisphere. Such children have features of thinking - they think in images. They may have the ability to draw, music, or, on the contrary, may have a number of neurological problems.

An individual lateral profile helps to determine the type of training program (depending on the combinations of the dominant hand, eye, etc., a school of a certain profile can be recommended to the child. For example, the leading left eye, hand and shoulder are a reason to send children to mathematics.

It makes sense to send children with different lateralization to a school where more attention is paid to reading and the humanities. But the approach of most gymnasiums, where they take a complex program in all subjects at once, is wrong. Such study is very difficult even for ordinary children and extremely difficult for right-brained, left-handed children).

– How can you distinguish between dyslexic and not trying at school?

- In fact, "not trying" and "not paying attention" - this is also what you need to pay attention to and look for the reason why the child quickly gets tired.

A parent can turn to a speech therapist with the fact that the child does not remember, for example, letters. But an experienced specialist is obliged to ask: “What else is worrying, what is still wrong?”

If a parent lists: fatigue, inability to switch, headaches, vomiting, inability to concentrate - these are all symptoms and reasons for contacting a neurologist.

Returning to the question of whether it is difficult for an ordinary child to learn letters, the answer is quite simple. The ability to memorize the image of a letter is a pre-prepared function. Almost from birth, children see letters everywhere - on billboards, in newspapers, in a book that dad reads. And one fine day the child will ask himself: “What is this letter?”, because he knows the word “letter”. That is, the child himself, through practical experience, will come to the point that a letter is a sign that means sound.

So, in general, an ordinary child should not have problems with memorizing and recognizing letters. If they occur, you need to seek the help of specialists.

– And if the child reads badly and slowly?

The speed of reading also depends on the way of reading, deviations in which are now also considered a dyslexic error.

Here, perhaps, we need to talk about the age of the children.

There are three ways of reading: syllable-by-syllable, "syllable+word", and "fluent reading". There is also “stacking” - the sequential naming of letters in a word (B, A, B, A) - this process cannot be called reading, this is the wrong type of learning to read.

I think it's perfectly normal for first-graders to read by syllables. This is how the first stage of the reading skill is worked out and it cannot be accelerated somehow from the outside - everything has its time. The child "read the syllables" and from this method goes to another - "syllable + word". Later, the child learns and begins to read whole words, moving on to fluent reading.

The child must not be rushed to master this skill. And the requests of parents and teachers to “read faster” are meaningless.

It is just as unreasonable to ask "faster knitting" or "faster gearshift in the car" of a person who is just learning the skill of knitting and driving a car.

Here we will not speed up anything, but we can do harm: the child will start to rush and try to “guess” the endings of words.

Parents who try to teach their child to read fluently too early achieve only one thing - “guessing reading”, when the child tries to guess the word from the first syllable that he managed to read.

As a result, the child makes mistakes, gets confused, cannot understand the text, and generally abandons reading.

At the initial stage of the formation of the reading skill, one must show patience - allow the child to read at the pace that he can keep for the time being, not to adjust or correct.

Allow you to move your finger under the line until this need itself disappears. A finger is such a “backbone”, a “magic wand”. It is already very difficult for a child to cope with independent reading, without which he did well at preschool age, when adults read to him.

The most important thing is to create an intrigue around reading, so that this activity, boring at first, can be brought to a habit and instilled in love for it. And one of the important conditions here is to read to adults themselves, to set an example. The child must see that parents, brothers and sisters read that this is something necessary and as important as eating and sleeping, so that it enters into his personal life.

Too many children don't progress in speed simply because they don't read. And when a child reads every day, the pace will definitely increase.

– Is the teacher able to recognize dyslexic from “not trying”?

- I'm not completely sure about this. I don't think he has time for this.

The teacher, most likely, sees the problem - there is no time to deal with it.

Although it cannot be ruled out that somewhere in the district school there is a wonderful Marivanna, who has enough mental strength to convey to her mother what problems the child has or, if not to solve them herself, then suggest going to a speech therapist.

I am not inclined to blame the teacher for not being able to solve a correctional problem. Even a teacher cannot sometimes send a child to a speech therapist, because such a staff unit is now not provided for at school.

– It is really not necessary to teach a child to read before school.

One can not interfere only with what the child does himself - at least at the age of two.

There is a large population study that is being conducted at the Institute of Developmental Physiology of the Russian Academy of Education: memory problems are the result of very early learning, because a system of inadequate requirements is created, including very early learning to read.

Until six or eight years old, the child is not ready to read “physiologically”: supporting functions are not formed:

selective attention is not developed, without which reading and writing are impossible, memory and speech are not sufficiently formed. Only by the age of six or eight, when the frontal lobes of the brain mature, do effective visual differentiations begin to form in the child. At this age, it makes physiological sense to start teaching reading.

If a three or four year old child begins to read, this can lead to the appearance of an inadequate reading mechanism, which is also called “guessing”: the child will glance unevenly along the line, having time to read the first few letters in the word and trying to guess the ending from them. Yes, this can lead to dyslexia.

– Does it make sense to send a child with neurological problems or a physiologically immature child to school later?

- I don't really like it when sensitive (most favorable) periods are missed. The most optimal age for going to school is seven to seven and a half years. A physiologically immature child will still continue to "mature" until puberty, so you should not overexpose him at home. Sometimes they say that you need to extend childhood to eight years. I wonder: why not until nine or ten, or even until adolescence? No, I am against.

It is psychologically easier for the whole family if the child goes to school at the same time as his peers and continues to solve already known and identified problems while studying. At the same time, you should not ignore classes with a speech therapist, a psychologist, and if necessary, continue to visit a neurologist.

I very rarely agree to wait until eight years. This is justified if the psychologist strongly insists - if the child does not have motivation to learn, he has just begun to really play, or I myself see that it is necessary to allow speech to stabilize, which was only recently “summoned”. But I don’t want to see six-year-olds at school either.

For example, I went to school at the age of seven and a half - and I never missed anything in my life. And so I still think that everything has its time: we will read at school, before school - walk and play - learn to interact.

- Are there any other mistakes in the preparation of school programs that can provoke errors in reading?

- This is possible when corrective techniques are included in the regular training program. For example, if a teacher in a regular lesson says: “Look, children: the letter “E” looks one way, and the letter “Z” looks the other way,” - tomorrow half of the children will confuse these letters. If a child taught in the usual way does not have problems in distinguishing letters, then there is no need to explain the difference.

– Is it necessary to leave only books for the period of learning to read and dose visual sources of information – gadgets, TV?

- I think that the book at the initial stages of learning will not withstand competition with any visual series anyway. A lot of learning processes are tied to visualization - it is no coincidence that we add up with the child not “2 + 2”, but “two and two apples”.

Therefore, in the fight against gadgets and computers, there will be only two effective means - a personal example of parents and the right steps.

For example, you can arrange reading together or reading by roles, but you need to find a book that would be interesting for the whole family. Maybe it will be possible to establish a tradition of family reading.

You can use your favorite gadget to help, offer a filmstrip - put a picture on the projector - and the child reads. That is, the main thing is to offer, show, stimulate interest in reading. It is clear that “mom washed the frame” is very boring. But even without a “frame” we can’t do it - there is a specially simple structure of the word.

Don't impose your taste on a child, don't offer him the wonderful Nosov and Dragunsky, let the child read what he likes - about princesses, hairstyles and manicures, or science fiction, about animals and cars.

The main thing is that the child pays attention to the book as a source of information.

You can work with incentives. Think about how you can encourage the child, the main thing is that the encouragement is here and now.

It could be candy, although dentists won't understand us.

You need to know your child well. I remember that a boy from a very wealthy family studied with me, it was difficult to surprise him with something, his parents could buy everything. And I came up with the idea of ​​buying him small chewing gums, and for each success I gave several at once. He didn’t chew them at all, he just liked that by the end of the lesson he had a whole hill of prizes. Someone will try - for a smiley, for a funny picture. And the child will start collecting such pictures simply because it is his encouragement.

– Can parents take care of their child in case of diagnosed dyslexia?

- They can, but under the guidance of a specialist. In addition to mandatory diagnostics and visits to a speech therapist, extended consultations can be organized, where a rehabilitation and educational route is drawn up, what exactly to do with the child. With the consent of the teacher, emerging questions can be quickly asked to him in social networks. Sometimes it is advisable to offer a “big” task for independent work, with which the parent goes home, and then shows the child in dynamics, after some time.

And this can be a task not only for reading, but also specific advice: to involve other specialists in work with the child - a neuropsychologist, a neurologist, a massage therapist.

Sometimes it happens that a neurologist looks at a child and says: “Let's first solve the problem with enuresis and digestion, because the child has constipation for the third day, he can hardly sit with you, what kind of reading is there?”

You will still be reading with your child at home, another thing is that a specialist has life hacks - interesting texts, encouragement, all sorts of finds. He makes learning faster and more fun.

– How long will it take to visit a speech therapist?

- Depends on the condition of the child. If we quickly find the “cog” that holds the problems and deal with it, we will move quickly enough.

If the child's condition is complicated by other diagnoses, such as mental retardation, more time will be required. Of course, he will not read complex texts with a lot of special terminology, but it is quite possible to bring the skill to such a state that the child can use it freely.

But I definitely do not believe in the story “now we read for three days and everything will pass”.

"Simply explaining" the skill of reading is impossible - it needs to be developed and improved.

For example, if the first grade program had a writing lesson once a week, we would learn to write before the eleventh.

– How realistic is it to get to all the specialists necessary for the correction of a child with dyslexia free of charge through compulsory medical insurance?

– You know, I am for private clinics. I understand that few people will like this answer, but it's all about the current admission standards. A specialist cannot look at a child in three minutes, write down everything you need, write out a ticket, and so on. Neurological problems need to be able to interpret, and this takes time.

For example, as a speech therapist, for me, the initial diagnosis of a child and a consultation takes from an hour to an hour and a half, but in other respects I do not limit time: the parent must receive answers to the questions that he came with, I allow, if you forgot to ask something, write to me in social networks. All over the world, high-quality consultations are also most often not government programs, alas.

– Should dyslexics be homeschooled?

– I am against any separation, because the child will need communication skills everywhere.

At the same time, it is clear that I cannot improve our society. So, look for a teacher who would be ready not to scold such a child, but to encourage his every success. If we encourage the personal success and personal growth of the child, there is no problem that he learns among everyone.

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