When should my child know letters

FAQ: Your Reading Child

Q: How old should a child be when he or she learns to recognize letters?
A: Most children learn to recognize letters between ages 3 and 4. Typically, children will recognize the letters in their name first. By age 5, most kindergarteners begin to make sound-letter associations, such as knowing that “book” starts with the letter B.

Q: How old should a child be when he or she learns to read?
A: By age 6, most 1st graders can read some words aloud with ease. Typically, children recognize their names and some sight words. At this age most children can sound out some letter combinations. By 2nd grade, most children are able to sound out a simple book.

Q: What is phonics?
A: Phonics is simply the method of teaching someone to read by sounding out letters and letter groups. Phonics practice can involve reading books with only simple words, many of which rhyme or have similar letter patterns.

Q: How do you read with a child who is just learning letters and sounds?
A: To introduce the concept of letters and sounds, start by showing your child the letters in her name. Name each letter and sound out each sound. You can do this with other words that interest her (mom, dad, baby, etc.). Once your child knows most of the letters in the alphabet, point to letters in the books you read with her, and ask her what they are. Show her how you sound out simple words:

This word starts with “D” which is the “duh” sound. Then there’s an “o” and a “g”. The “g” makes a “guh” sound. “Duh”-o-“guh”. Do you think that word is dog?

As your child learns to read, try alternating pages in a simple book — you read one page, she tries to read the next.

Q: What are appropriate books for my child’s age and/or level?
A: Using Lexile Measures or Leveled Reading, your child’s school has probably determined the level at which your child is reading. Your goal is to help your child pick books that are challenging, but not too hard to enjoy. Librarians, teachers, and online databases like those at www.lexile.com can help.

Q: What is leveled reading?
A:Leveled reading is a way to match a reader to a book that is at the just-right level for him. An emerging reader needs to be challenged to read more difficult books, but the books can’t be too hard for him to attempt on his own. When entering a leveled reading program, a student first takes a test to determine his level.

Q: What is a Lexile Measure?
A: Both books and readers can be measured using the Lexile Framework. If your student has taken a test at school and received a Lexile Measure, you can visit www.Lexile.com to learn how to best use this information, including ways to find the perfect level book for your child.

Q: My child isn’t reading at his grade level and he says she “hates” reading. What should I do?
A: If your child falls behind even in early elementary school, you may want to have her evaluated for a learning disability. Even if the result is inconclusive, it’s best to know if your child has any special issues, as there are methods to teaching reading to children with special needs that work better than some traditional reading programs. Alternately, your child might just need more engaging books. There are many books available, such as the Captain Underpants series, as well as comic books, which “reluctant readers” love. Keep your child engaged with reading by encouraging her to read what she enjoys.

Q: Where can I find lists of quality children's books?
A: The Association for Library Service to Children grants book and media awards to the best offerings for children. This is where you can find information on recent Newbery Award winners (most distinguished contribution to American literature for children) and Caldecott Medal winners (most distinguished American picture books), among others. This site also houses multiple book lists for children

Q: How can I encourage my child to read despite all the other distractions?
A: The best way to show that reading books can be fun and rewarding is to model the behavior you want from your children After dinner or on a lazy weekend afternoon, instead of turning on a movie or the TV, curl up with your own book, and encourage your child to do the same. Young children also love being read to, and if you are tired of the books in your house, a trip to the library can give you a new stack to read. Even if this only happens once a week, it may become a cherished family tradition.

At What Age Should a Child Know the Alphabet? – Smaller Scholars

As children grow, they naturally hit learning milestones. One of the most critical educational milestones a child must reach is learning the alphabet, which prepares them for reading and writing.

But at what age should a child know the alphabet?

In this article, you will learn at what age a child should know how to recite the alphabet, recognize and write individual letters, learn letter sounds, and eventually learn how to read. Read on to make sure your little one is on the right track!

At What Age Should a Child Know the Alphabet?

Recitation

Typically, by the age of three, children should be able to recite the alphabet. However, every child is different. Some toddlers may learn in their twos, and others might not pick it up until the late threes.

Children generally learn how to recite the alphabet through repetition. If you sing the ABC song to your kids often, they are more likely to pick it up quicker, just as they would any song.

Recognition

Most children can recognize letters between the ages of three and four. Most kids will recognize the letters in their name first.

For example, a boy named Jace will probably be able to remember what the letter “J” looks like as well as recognize most other letters in his name. Similar to alphabet recitation, use repetition to teach your children about recognizing individual letters. You may ask them, “What letter is that?” whenever you see an isolated letter.

Writing

By ages four to five, children will start writing letters. Children will learn to write the alphabet in preschool and kindergarten, but it may be beneficial to have your child practice writing his/her letters at home. Most children at this age know that written symbols represent messages and may be interested in writing on their own. One of the easiest ways children learn how to write letters is to begin tracing them.

Additionally, teaching your child how to write his/her name is an important step that will ultimately help them become familiar with writing the rest of the alphabet.

Sounds

By five years old, children will start to associate letters with their accompanying sounds, otherwise known as phonics. In other words, around the age of five, children should be able to reason that the word “book” starts with the letter B.

Children begin learning phonics in kindergarten, which is a vital step to decoding written text and begin reading.

Reading

By six years old, first graders should be able to read words aloud with ease. For the most part, children can recognize sight words and their names. Moreover, children can decode some words by sounding out their letter combinations.

By second grade, a child should be able to sound-out a simple book. By the third grade, your child should be able to read independently and fluently. By this point, your child should be a master of the alphabet and is ready to master the art of reading!

What If Your Child Isn’t Learning at the Rate S/He Should?

It’s important to remember that every child is different and may learn at a different rate. If your child isn’t learning the alphabet at the pace s/he should, one reason may be because s/he isn’t interested or is simply undergoing a minor setback.

However, if your child is falling severely behind, it’s important to find out if your child truly has a problem learning or if it is nothing to worry about. Therefore, work one-on-one with your child to determine if there is a problem. For example, practice reading and writing with your child. If s/he is having a hard time comprehending the instruction or if it’s taking him/her an abnormally long time to do the task, consider talking with your child’s teacher about it.

In the end, if you suspect your child might have a reading or learning disability, discuss it with a doctor. If your child is truly suffering from a reading disability, it can cause him/her to fall behind in his/her education. The sooner you seek help, the sooner you will be able to find a solution that works for your precious little one!

Learn the Alphabet at a Top-Tier School!

So at what age should a child know the alphabet? Learning the alphabet is an ongoing process. That being said, it’s crucial to enroll your little one in a school that will not only teach him/her but also helps develop in him/her a love of learning.

Smaller Scholars Montessori Academy helps children become more confident, creative, and independent through the acclaimed Montessori experience. You can enroll your child in the toddler program, which is for kids between the ages of eighteen months and three years, or in the primary program, for children between three and six years. In both programs, children have a rich classroom environment in which they are encouraged to explore, learn, and thrive. Then, as children grow older, they can explore the elementary program for kids up to twelve years old.

What are you waiting for? Ensure your child learns the alphabet and how to read by enrolling your child in Smaller Scholars Montessori Academy! Contact them to learn more.

How to learn the alphabet with a child. Learning letters together

Letters are all around us. Signs, announcements, books and magazines - all this the child sees from a very early age. But it doesn’t immediately become clear that these “squiggles” are not just incomprehensible meaningless icons, but a way to convey information in the form of text. Therefore, with the study of the alphabet, a completely new world opens up for the baby, in which letters are folded into syllables, and syllables into words that can be read and later written. In our article, we will tell you when to start learning the alphabet, how to make the process interesting for a child, and what methods are best for children of different ages.

Why learn the alphabet?

It seems that the answer to this question is quite obvious - that the child can read. However, it's worth digging a little deeper. Often, parents do not fully realize what caused their desire for the child to quickly master the letters. If the kid is already 5-6 years old, and the first grade is just around the corner, then the desire to learn the basics so that further study is easier, understandable and logical. Or maybe your child is only three years old, but you want him to show off his knowledge at a family evening? Or do all the acquaintances vying with each other say that their children have not only learned the alphabet, but also read freely? Give yourself an honest answer to these questions, and consider whether it is necessary to postpone training until a more appropriate moment.

The most important thing is whether your child is ready. Curiosity, interest in new things, the ability to memorize previously unknown information are all signs that you can start learning the alphabet. But you should always remember that there is no point in teaching against the child’s desire, all classes should be held in an unobtrusive playful way. Questions “how to read?”, “What kind of letter?” Are pouring in on you, the baby is interested in not only pictures in books, but also captions to them, or are you going to school soon? Well, then feel free to start your acquaintance with the alphabet.

Basic tips for learning the alphabet with a child

The alphabet is not just a certain sequence of letters. This is the foundation from which the child's learning to read begins. Therefore, it is important to understand that simply learning the alphabet as a rhyme or a counting rhyme is possible, but practically useless if there is no practical application of the information received. If you do not start trying to teach your child to read immediately, but after a long break, there is a high probability that your baby will simply forget the letters by this point, and you will have to start all over again.

There are a few general rules to follow when you start learning the alphabet with children:

1. Learn the sounds, not the letters

It's easy for us adults to figure out what the name of the letter is and what sound it is means may not match. For a small child, on the contrary, such a concept may be too complicated. Do not confuse the baby, he will eventually learn that the letters are called “be”, “el” or even “and short”, better demonstrate what sounds are indicated by the corresponding signs - “b”, “l”, “y”, give examples of words with these sounds. In this way, the child, with less effort, will be able to understand how syllables are read, and later whole words.

2. Do not learn the alphabet in order

Remembering a clear sequence is, of course, useful for the development of a child's memory, but it does not make it obvious to him what he actually learned and why. If, however, the alphabet is disassembled gradually, according to a clear and logical system, without overloading the child's perception excessively, there will be much more benefit, since knowledge will not be superficial, but based on a deeper understanding of the structure of the language.

3. Do not mix vowels and consonants

Learning letters mixed up is no less a mistake than memorizing the alphabet strictly in order. Vowels and consonants must be studied separately, otherwise the child will be completely confused. Always remember that things that seem clear and simple to us, small children learn for the first time, so even the main sign by which sounds are divided (vowel-consonant) is not immediately comprehended. The situation when the studied letters do not have any common feature is confusing and slows down the assimilation of the material.

4. Vowels first

There are only 10 vowels in the Russian alphabet, so the child will have to remember a little at first. In addition, vowels require only a long “singing” and slight changes in the articulation of the lips, neither the tongue nor the teeth need to be connected, so it will be easier for the baby to understand how the written sign correlates with the sound being pronounced. When all the vowels are firmly learned, it will be possible to add consonants.

5. Don't force learning

Of course, you really want your child to learn all the letters and start reading as soon as possible, but you still shouldn't rush. Learn one or two letters, repeat what you have learned more often, do not move on to a new one without waiting for the consolidation of what has already been studied. Start with very simple and clear things. Show the young student the letter "A", tell how it is pronounced, what it looks like, what words begin with it. Fold it together with the baby from sticks, draw or mold it from plasticine - tactile sensations will help the child better remember the image of the letter and associate it with sound. Apply theory to practice, for example, ask while walking to look for the letter "A" on signs, in advertisements, and so on. Only when the child has learned the letter and the corresponding sound, proceed to the next, all the same one at a time, methodically and slowly.

Age-appropriate alphabet learning

3-4 years old

If you think your child is ready to learn letters at 3 years old, here are some tips and tricks to help you get great results.

First of all, in no case do not force or coerce the child into classes, they should take place exclusively at the request of the child, in a fun way, and end as soon as you see signs of fatigue and weakening of concentration. The optimal lesson time for a three-year-old is 5-7 minutes.

Do not set a goal to learn the entire alphabet in a short time, it is at best pointless, and in some cases it can even be harmful - up to a certain point the child's brain may simply not be ready for this or that knowledge. Do not try to outwit nature, at three years old your task is more to interest, captivate the child, show him the basics.

Do not overload your child with a lot of information - let your “lessons” take place no more than twice a week, and take the rest of the time to consolidate and repeat the studied material. At the same time, the regularity of classes is very important, conducting them from time to time is not the best idea, the child will get confused and forget what you went through with him.

Start with vowels. Move on to consonants only when you are sure that the child has firmly learned all 10 vowels and brought the skill to automatism. Vowels are best taught in pairs: A - Z, O - E, U - Yu, E - E, S - I. So it will be easier for the baby to remember. Later, this will also help with the assimilation of the principle of hardness-softness of consonants.

Use books with bright, large pictures. Closer to the age of four, the child will also be interested in blocks with letters, coloring books and stickers, posters with and without voice acting; but be careful with the posters - remember that we need to learn the sounds, not the names of the letters, so look for posters that pronounce exactly the sounds. Magnetic letters will also help - they can be placed on a magnetic board or simply on the refrigerator. You can learn rhymes and songs with the mention of the sounds that you are studying, play with letters cut out of paper.

Let the child represent the letter in different ways - by drawing, modeling with plasticine, folding with sticks or drawing lines in the sand or grits. Such activities are also useful for fine motor skills, and this is a very important skill for the baby, which affects, among other things, the development of speech.

There are more consonants in the Russian language, so it will take a longer time to study them, and if you consider that most consonants have both hard and soft variants, the task becomes even more complicated. But with the right approach, there should not be any particular difficulties. If the child has already mastered all the vowels and understands the difference between, for example, “A” and “I”, then it will not be difficult for him with your help to figure out how “ma” and “me” differ. You can make a table where such pairs of syllables will be shown clearly. The main thing is to always clearly pronounce the sound yourself and achieve the same pronunciation in the child. Correct articulation is the key to both good diction and correct reading in the future.

5-6 years old

For all our commitment to early development, many experts agree that the optimal age for learning the alphabet is 5-6 years old. The child will soon go to school, which means that his brain is already quite ready to memorize all the letters and gradually learn to read. At this age, it is especially important that your preschooler speaks clearly and correctly, so pay maximum attention to his speech, whether all sounds are pronounced without problems, whether some of them need to be corrected independently or with the help of a speech therapist.

If at three years the emphasis is on the play component of classes, then by the age of 5-6 it can be slightly shifted towards the child's consciousness. Tell us about how great it will be to read books yourself, how knowledge of the alphabet will come in handy at school. Keep the elements of the game, use the same methods that are suitable for four-year-olds, but increase the lesson time, introduce more printed materials. You will need special recipes for preschoolers, books and manuals with creative tasks, various sets of cards.

Introduce your child to syllables. Use single letter flashcards to show how a syllable is built - for example, say that a consonant and a vowel run or are attracted to each other and demonstrate their convergence by saying the syllable at the same time. Later, use cards with a ready-made printed or hand-drawn syllable in the lessons. Do not forget about the regularity of classes and the constant repetition of the material covered.

Primer learning

By the age of six, a good primer will be clear and easy to learn. For example, the “Primer” by N. Zhukova is considered one of the best, although for younger children it may seem boring - it focuses on learning without providing entertainment materials. But in this primer much attention is paid to speech therapy moments.

“My primer: a book for teaching preschoolers to read” N.V. Nishchevoi - a manual also with a speech therapy bias, but the author adheres to his own methodology for studying letters and sounds. The path from simple sounds to complex ones will help the child develop both reading skills and good articulation.

In order for a child to develop a love for reading from a very early age, VV Shakirova's Journey to the Sound Book is a good choice. There is more entertainment material here that will interest and captivate the child. In addition, Shakirova paid a lot of attention to the development of motivation, and this will definitely come in handy in the future, in the process of further study.

Games for learning the alphabet

In this section, we will give examples of games that will make learning more interesting and at the same time more effective. Entertaining elements will not only diversify classes, but also provide a fairly wide field for applying the acquired knowledge in practice.

"Find the letter" . On a sheet of paper, arrange different letters in a random order. Let them be bright and large. You name the letter, and the child must find it and show it. A mobile version of this game is to hang sheets with large letters around the room, let the child find and tear off the desired sheet.

Memo . Prepare a set of cards, each letter must be represented in duplicate to get a certain number of pairs. Cards are laid out in several rows face down. Have the child turn over one card and name the sound that the letter on it represents. Then you need to find a pair for her by opening other cards. It didn’t work the first time - the cards are turned back face down and you have to look again. A pair was found - the player takes both cards for himself, and so on until the moment when all the cards run out.

“What letter does it begin with?” . Arrange several animals in a row - these can be drawings on paper, cards or small toys. Select the letters with which their names begin, and give them mixed to the child. The task is to correlate which letter refers to whom, and put it next to the desired animal.

Collect the letter . Draw a letter the size of the entire sheet of paper. Cut into several parts, let the kid assemble the resulting puzzle and name which letter is depicted on it.

Dice game . Surely you have cubes with letters, and if not, they are easy to make yourself out of paper. You roll a die and see which letter comes up on top. The child needs to remember an animal (or even an object!), The name of which begins with this letter and show it, for example, if the letter “B” fell out, then you can depict a crow - wave your hands like wings and croak.

Edible Letters . The alphabet is not only useful, but also delicious! Your child will have even more fun learning if he can not only name the letter, but also eat it. You can buy ready-made cookies in the form of letters, or bake them yourself, so the baby will even be more interesting, especially if you decorate the finished cookies together. You can also cut out letters from fruits and vegetables.

No matter how your activities progress, be patient with your child, don't demand too much from him or scold him if something doesn't work out. If you follow the basic principles and recommendations, creatively approach the lessons and give the baby positive emotions, your child will definitely learn the alphabet easily and with pleasure.

How to teach a child to read: important rules and effective techniques

October 26, 2022 Likbez Education

Teaching a preschooler to read without losing interest in books is real. Lifehacker has selected the best ways for responsible parents.

How to understand that it is time to teach a child to read

There are several signs of psychological readiness.

The child speaks fluently in sentences and understands the meaning of what is said.
The child understands directions: left-right, up-down. For learning to read, it is important that the baby can follow the text from left to right and from top to bottom.
The child distinguishes sounds (what speech therapists call developed phonemic hearing). Simply put, the baby will easily understand by ear where the house and the bow are, and where the tom and the hatch are.
Your child pronounces all the sounds and has no speech problems.

Natalya Zharikova

Speech therapist with 33 years of experience

A child with speech therapy problems does not hear and does not distinguish similar sounds. From here come errors with speech, and subsequently with reading, and even more often with writing. It is very difficult for a parent to identify violations on their own, so usually a teacher or a speech therapist can point this out to them.

How to teach your child to read

Be patient and follow these simple guidelines.

Set an example

In a family where there is a culture and tradition of reading, children themselves will reach for books. Read not because it is necessary and useful, but because it is a pleasure for you.

Read together and discuss

Read aloud to the child and then look at the pictures together, encouraging them to interact with the book: “Who is that drawn? Can you show me the cat's ears? And who is that standing next to her?” Older children can be asked more difficult questions: “Why did he do this? What do you think will happen next?"

Don't learn the letters as they are called in the alphabet

Instead, help your child remember the sound the letter makes. For example, you show the letter "m" and say: "This is the letter m (not em )". If a child remembers the alphabetic names of letters ( em , es, ef and so on), it will be quite difficult for him to learn to read. Then, when he sees the word ra-ma in the book, he will try to pronounce er-a-um-a .

Go from easy to hard

Once the child has memorized a few letters (from 2 to 5) and the sounds they represent, move on to syllables. Let the words consisting of repeating syllables be the first: ma-ma, pa-pa, uncle, nanny . In this case, it is not necessary to break the syllable into separate sounds. Do not say: "These are the letters m and a , and together they read ma ". Immediately learn that the syllable is pronounced like ma , otherwise the baby may start to read letter by letter. After mastering simple combinations, move on to more complex ones: ko‑t, zhu‑k, house .

Help to understand the meaning of what they read

Do this when the child begins to slowly but surely reproduce words and whole sentences in syllables. For example, the kid read: "Mom washed the frame." Stop and ask: “What did you just read about?”. If he finds it difficult to answer, let him read the sentence again. And you ask more specific questions: “Who washed the frame? What did mom wash?

Show that letters are everywhere

Play a game. Let the child find the letters that surround him on the street and at home. These are the names of stores, and memos on information stands, and advertising on billboards, and even traffic light messages: it happens that the inscription “Go” lights up on green, and “Wait so many seconds” on red.

Play

And play again. Stack blocks with letters and syllables, make up words, ask your child to read you some kind of sign or inscription on the packaging in the store.

Natalya Zharikova

There are many exercises for memorizing letters. For example, circle the desired letter among a number of others, circle the correctly written among the incorrect ones, color or shade. You can also ask the child to tell what the letter looks like.

Use every opportunity to train

Whether you are waiting in line at the clinic or driving somewhere, take out a book with pictures and short stories to them and invite your child to read together.

Build on your success

Repeat familiar texts, look for familiar characters in new stories. Runaway Bunny is found both in "Teremka" and "Kolobok".

Do not force

This is perhaps the most important. Don't take away a child's childhood. Learning should not go through violence and tears.

What techniques to use to teach your child to read

Here are six popular, affordable and effective techniques. Choose one or try several and choose the one that interests your child the most.

1. ABCs and primers

Frame: This is all mine / YouTube

Traditional, but the longest way. The difference between these books is that the alphabet fixes each letter with a mnemonic picture: on the page with B a drum will be drawn, and next to Yu - spinning top. The alphabet helps to remember letters and often interesting rhymes, but will not teach you how to read.

The primer consistently teaches the child to combine sounds into syllables, and syllables into words. This process is not easy and requires perseverance.

There are quite a lot of author's primers now. According to the books of Nadezhda Betenkova, Vseslav Goretsky, Dmitry Fonin, Natalya Pavlova, children can study both with their parents before school and in the first grade.

Parents agree that one of the most understandable methods for teaching preschoolers is Nadezhda Zhukova's primer. The author simply explains the most difficult thing for a child: how to turn letters into syllables, how to read ma-ma rather than start calling individual letters me-a-me-a .

2. Zaitsev's Cubes

Shot: Little Socrates / YouTube

If a child consistently masters letters and syllables while learning from the primer, then in 52 Zaitsev's Cubes he is given access to everything at once: a single letter or combinations of consonant and vowel, consonant and hard or soft sign.

The child effortlessly learns the differences between unvoiced and voiced sounds, because the cubes with voiceless consonants are filled with wood, and the cubes with voiced consonants are filled with metal.

The cubes also differ in size. The large ones depict hard warehouses, the small ones - soft ones. The author of the technique explains this by the fact that when we pronounce to (hard warehouse), the mouth opens wide, or (soft warehouse) - lips in a half smile.

The set includes tables with warehouses that the parent sings (yes, he doesn’t speak, but sings).

The child quickly masters warehouse reading with the help of cubes. But there are also disadvantages: he may begin to swallow endings and face difficulties already at school when parsing a word by composition.

3. "Skladushki" and "Teremki" by Vyacheslav Voskobovich

Frame: Play and Toy Club / YouTube

In "Skladushki" Vyacheslav Voskobovich reworked Zaitsev's idea: 21 cards show all the warehouses of the Russian language with nice thematic pictures. Included is a CD with songs, the texts of which go under each picture.

Folders are great for kids who like looking at pictures. Each of them is an occasion to discuss with the child where the kitten is, what the puppy is doing, where the beetle flew.

It is possible to teach a child with these cards from the age of three. At the same time, it should be noted that the author of the methodology himself does not consider it necessary to force early development.

"Teremki" by Voskobovich consist of 12 wooden cubes with consonants and 12 cardboard cubes with vowels. First, the child gets acquainted with the alphabet and tries with the help of parents to come up with words that begin with each of the letters.

Then it's time to study the syllables. In the tower with the letter M is inserted into A - and the first syllable is ma . From several towers you can lay out words. Learning is based on play. So, when replacing the vowel , the house will turn into smoke .

You can start playing tower blocks from the age of two. At the same time, parents will not be left alone with the cubes: the kit includes a manual with a detailed description of the methodology and game options.

4. Chaplygin's dynamic cubes

Shot: Both a boy and a girl! Children's channel - We are twins / YouTube

Evgeny Chaplygin's manual includes 10 cubes and 10 movable blocks. Each dynamic block consists of a pair - a consonant and a vowel. The task of the child is to twist the cubes and find a pair.

At the initial stage, as with any other method of learning to read in warehouses, the child makes the simplest words from repeating syllables: ma-ma, pa-pa, ba-ba . The involved motor skills help to quickly remember the shape of the letters, and the search for already familiar syllables turns into an exciting game. The cubes are accompanied by a manual describing the methodology and words that can be composed.

The optimal age for classes is 4-5 years. You can start earlier, but only in the game format.

5. Doman's cards

Frame: My little star / YouTube

American doctor Glenn Doman proposes to teach children not individual letters or even syllables, but whole words. Parents name and show the child the words on the cards for 1-2 seconds. In this case, the baby is not required to repeat what he heard.

Classes start with 15 cards with the simplest concepts like female and male . Gradually, the number of words increases, those already learned leave the set, and the child begins to study phrases: for example, color + object, size + object.

How can one understand that a child has understood and memorized the visual image of a word, if the author of the methodology recommends starting classes from birth? Glenn Doman in "The Harmonious Development of the Child" strongly emphasizes that it is not necessary to arrange tests and checks for the child: kids do not like this and lose interest in classes.

It's better to remember 50 cards out of 100 than 10 out of 10.

Glenn Doman

But given that parents can't help but check, he advises the child to play the game if they want and are ready. For example, you can put a few cards and ask to bring one or point to it.

Today, psychologists, neurophysiologists and pediatricians agree that the Doman method is aimed not at teaching reading, but at mechanical memorization of visual images of words. The child turns out to be an object of learning and is almost deprived of the opportunity to learn something on his own.

It is also worth adding: in order to proceed to the stage of reading according to Doman, parents need to prepare cards with all (!) Words that are found in a particular book.

6. Montessori method

Photo: Kolpakova Daria / Shutterstock

Montessori reading comes from the opposite: first we write and only then we read. Letters are the same pictures, so you first need to learn how to draw them and only then engage in pronunciation and reading. Children begin by tracing and shading the letters, and through this, they memorize their outline. When several vowels and consonants have been studied, they move on to the first simple words.

Much attention is paid to the tactile component, so children can literally touch the alphabet cut out of rough or velvety paper.

The value of the methodology lies in learning through play. So, you can put a rough letter and a plate of semolina in front of the child and offer to first circle the sign with your finger, and then repeat this on the semolina.

The difficulty for parents is to purchase or prepare a significant amount of handouts. But you can try to make cards with your own hands from cardboard and sandpaper.

What's the result

On the Internet and on posters advertising "developers", you will be offered ultra-modern methods of teaching a child to read at three, two years old or even from birth.