What books can i use to help my 3 1/2 learn to read?

Question

my 3 1/2 year old daughter had told me that she wants to learn to read. She already knows most of her letters. I want some ideas on what books i can use to teach her.

Answer 1

Hello. You have taken the first step by teaching her the ABC's. The nest step is for her to recognize them when she sees them, and then to learn their sounds, or different sounds. Once she has mastered this, she will be well on her way to reading on her own.

I have three kids all teens now, and they all started reading before preschool. It was just reading to them, explaining to them the sounds letter and words!

GOOD LUCK!!

Tonia

Answer 2

Well, for starters, The Dr. Seuss books work really well. Flash cards can help her sound out words. I'm pretty sure she knows what sound each letter makes. So, just sounding out the words like "cat" or "dog" can help.

Answer 3

First have practice reading parts of a word. I find a consonant and then a vowel. It took my son a couple months of practice to get proficient. sa le ta. Then have her add another consonant and practice three letter words. Its harder to read a sentence than words. When she is good at reading words Bob books have sentences with just three letter words. Or you can make your own books. Take reading in small steps. I think its different learning to read at three than in first grade. My son made good progress on five minutes or less a day and didn't feel frustrated. Make sure you keep it easy for her. And finish practicing the letters she doesn't know first. My son would point to the letter and say the sound it makes three times. a a a b b b. Its also important to know the vowels. I just wrote the vowels out and said these are the vowels and gave their sounds before the reading lesson began. Then when she has mastered the three letter words you can teach the two vowel rule.

Hope that helps.

Answer 4

Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What do you see? by Bill Martin, Jr.

The Runaway Bunny by Margaret Wise

Goodnight Moon by Margaret Wise Brown

Answer 5

Here is a phonics system to teach your child if she is really motivated to read. It is a little dry but if you get comfortable with it, it can be fun and it really works teaching reading via phonics

Teach your child to read in 100 easy lessons

http://www.amazon.com/Teach-Your-Child-R...

The other suggestions are great also.

Another good thing is using predictable text.

A good example is brown bear, brown bear where there is a pattern to the text with fill ins she will start to recognize the sight words.

The other best thing is to read a lot to her and expose her to as many different books as possible.

Sounds like you have a smarty on your hands.. have fun!

Answer 6

I work as a preschool teacher of children exactly your daughters age.  

There is a series of Bob books if you are able to spend some money.  Not sure where to get them, but a friends three year old had them and was reading/quoting from memory within a very short time.  They deal with phonics and very few words are introduced at any one time within the series.

Without spending a lot of money you can get some ideas from perpetual preschool....just be prepared to do a lot of reading as there is an overabundance of info.

There are a number of songs that work with phonics that we sing in my class...mainly variations of other songs, and these will help when sounding out words.  

The favorite song with my class right now is a variation of "Who Let the Dogs Out"

Who let the A out

/a/ /a/ /a/ /a/ (making the long or short A sound)

A makes the sound of

/a/ /a/ /a/ /a/

and than let the child pick the letters.

Also the Leval 1 books that they sell through Scholastic or I have seen them at Barnes and Noble are very good.....but it is definatly a repitition thing.  "Itchy Itchy Chicken Pox", and  "I am a Seed" were favorites of a former Kindergarten class.  I think I could probably write the books from memory at this point.

Dr Suess....though excellant books, are often too long or too wordy for the very beginner.  They are more of a lvl 3 or 4 book in many cases.

Answer 7

if I was you I would get her a level one book  if she want to start to read and went you read to her at night let her try to read some of the words

Answer 8

Any kind of books are good for her!!! It's important to remember to not pick books that are overly long or have deep concepts in them. Don't pick books like the d**k and Jane books or the See Spot. Studies have been done thta if a child reads enough of those books, they can develop reading habits similar to like the book- like "See Spot run. Spot runs fast. Spot is tired." That sort of thing. Some of those are ok, but include ryhme books, books with one word per page like animal or color books, early Dr. Seuss readers are great, books without words are awesome and have her tell you the story of the pictures.. Make sure to pick out books that have different textrues too, this will keep her interest. I used to teach preschool, and something I loved having the kids do was to just staple some blank pages together and them "write" their own story and then share it with everyone else. Ahhh so much fun- I miss working with the little ones and all of their funny sentences!!!

I read some of the other responses- the different phonics/phenetics programs are great for kids, but I think it's important to not get stuck on one program. Take bits and pieces from different things and see what your child enjoys the most or what gives her the most difficulty. It is important to introduce all this to her so she will be ready for regular school, but also realize she will get a lot of this in school. Either way I think the most important thing about learning to read is to make sure a child thinks it's fun and enjoyable.

Answer 9

My 4 yr old and I are using this book and are having good success with it. It came highly recommended from other home school moms I know.

Teach your child to read in 100 easy lessons

http://www.amazon.com/Teach-Your-Child-R...

Answer 10

Make sure she not only knows her letters, but recognizes the sounds they make.  

This includes the long and short sounds of each vowel.

Knowing what the letter is is only the first step, she has to be able to say what the letter "says."

Then you can get her any set of phonics books.  There is a set for almost any licensed character.  Bob books are also popular.  Also, there are beginning leveled readers put out by several publishers (DK Readers, Scholastic Step into Reading) that are good.

You can also print out books from www.starfall.com

But the most important thing is to continue to read to her.

Good Luck

Answer 11

There is a set of books that are labeled "My 'A' Book", "My 'B' Book", etc.  There are 26 of them.  Check at www.scholastic.com for some ideas.  Also, check with your pediatrician to see if you are eligible for Dolly Parton's Imagination Library.  Children 0-5 yrs receive, free, one book a month until their fifth birthday.  You can also go to www.imaginationlibrary.com.  Good luck.