Back to Business

Well, so much for updating my blog. It has been far too long. I won't go through the list of excuses other than to say that it has been very busy and unfortunately the blog got pushed to the back burner.
However, I'm not teaching any courses this summer quarter at the local university, so I'm back to business. This summer I'm going to focus on teaching my daughter (who is now 4-1/2) to start some beginning reading. The last year or so I have really focused on pre-reading skills, like listening for sounds in words, identifying the connection between sounds and letters, etc. I don't do any of these things through flashcards or 20 minute marathon sessions on phonics. All of it is through games that we play or activities that stem from a real purpose, ie. making a list of groceries that need to be bought that day and sounding out initial sounds. This summer will be no exception, except that I am going to *try* to see if she is up for trying some simple books with me.
I say that I'm going to try only because I'm not sure if she will be excited about it or not and I don't know how successful I will be. So the big goal is to get her motivated to read, and then try to make some baby steps towards reading by reading some very simple books that will be a piece of cake for her to read.
I will most likely make tons of mistakes and fall flat on my face frequently over the course of the summer, but I intend to document it and share. :) Wish me luck!

Activity: Spelling mixed up words

Mixing up letters in a word that you just spelled together is a great way to work on letter sounds and help children understand that the letters have to be put in a certain order to communicate the intended message.

The other day while Isadora and I were eating breakfast I spelled out her name with marker while she helped me sound it out and then I suggested that we cut out each letter and then paste them on a piece of construction paper that she chose. She thought it was a great idea. Now I probably should have let her cut out some, but as you can probably note from the picture, I cut them all out quickly so that I could speed things up. As I cut them out, they dropped to the table in a mixed up mess and I presented the problem to Isadora - "How do we get the letters back in the right order?" Isadora initially thought that it didn't matter what order that they were in - DRAASIO was just as right as ISADORA. So I told her that actually, no, the letters have to be in the right order. So here's a little how it went:

"What makes the /i/ sound?"
"I!"
"Okay - after the /i/ sound what do you hear? s-s-s..."
"S"

We continued like this until we had spelled out her name. The only tricky part was the OR in her name, where I explained that the /or/sound was made by the letters O and R together. Normally I would let her by with invented spelling, but I think the name is important to spell correctly.

Next time I'll explain the bunny story that you can also see in the picture. :)

Don't do this at home! Cutesy shaped books

Creating a cute little shape book with Isadora proved to not be as motivating as I had hoped.

Ugh! What a slacker I have been. I graduated with my PhD almost a month ago and I have done nothing with this blog. To get myself back in the swing of things, I am going to try to limit myself to no more than ten minute updates. We'll see how that goes.

Over the course of the last 8 months I have talked about all the literacy activities that have met with success when I did them with Isadora. Well, here is a supreme dud. Why tell you about a lame literacy activity to do with a preschooler? To save you from the same mistake!

So here is my first mistake: I went for cute. I was thumbing through an old teaching guide that showed you how to make these adorable little shaped books (books shaped like rockets, books shaped like owls, etc.) and I thought one of them would be inspiring for Isadora. Surely a cute little penguin book would inspire her to make up a fabulous story that I could write down. So I sat down with her and she picked out this cute little book that looked like a pond with a little duck floating in the middle. Okay - I'll stop with the buildup. Here's what happened: I cut out all the little pieces for about ten minutes while Isadora colored and played with her little brother. Once I proudly displayed MY creation to Isadora, she was no longer interested. Sadly, I was now so invested in this lame project that I basically made up the story myself and wrote it down, prodding her every step of the way. It was about three short sentences long. Shameful.

So after all that work, Isadora did not like it and it really did not inspire the kind of creativity and excitement that I had hoped. I realized that I had done all the creating for this project, taking all ownership away from her. No wonder she wasn't interested. I get much better stories out of her when she makes a scribble and we label it "fog." Well, you can't win them all.

Mission: Nonfiction for Preschool

Books like Life-Size Zoo get preschoolers energized about reading non-fiction texts.

*Sidenote - I graduated!! Yes, I now officially have my PhD. This announcement, while gratifying to make, is mainly to excuse my lengthy absence from updating my blog. Whew - glad that is all done. It has been a long six years of work.

"Can you read me the big zoo book again? From the beginning." I would be exhausted from reading Isadora's new most favorite book Life-Size Zoo except that I am so thrilled that she is so energized about reading non-fiction. What is so great about it, you might ask? Let's start with the huge pictures that show details like an elephants pores or the whiskers underneath an armadillo's armor. Then you add in the side text that introduces your child to the animals name, sex, and age as well as important facts about the animal. I didn't think the name was that big of a deal until Isadora insisted on me reading out each name and its age, almost as if she were getting a formal introduction. Then there are the bubbles at the side of the animal that point out some of the small details in the picture that your child would most likely miss if not directed to it. Where, for example, would you find the scent gland on an elephant's face?? I didn't know. Thank goodness the book pointed it out.

Food for Thought: Reading Nonfiction

Encouraging your child to read nonfiction now can have a big payoff later in their childhood.

Reading nonfiction is a big deal. Think about what most of us, as adults, read now. I read (and write) almost exclusively nonfiction. And I'm not talking just books - it's magazines, reports, the newspaper, etc., etc. Unfortunately the majority of reading material that our kids get is fiction. Girls, in particular, usually excel at reading in the early elementary years when most children are reading fiction, but then begin to lag behind boys as the learning focus shifts to content areas like science, math, and history. That statistic describes my experience exactly; I did well in reading at the elementary level but then had a horrible time in science and history when I needed to read something that didn't have a story line. Though you might argue that history does have a story line, the way it is presented in history textbooks is not similar to what most of your children will be reading for pleasure in junior high.

The point of this post is to encourage all of you to get nonfiction books and texts for your young children. I subscribe to Your Big Backyard for Isadora and celebrate its arrival when it comes in the mail. I also try to check out nonfiction books when I can. Gail Gibbons is an excellent author for nonfiction that appeals to preschoolers (It is her book on Monarch Butterflies that I have in the upper corner of this post). But I have to admit that the pickings are slim, and about 80% of what Isadora has on her bookshelves in fiction...even knowing what I know.

The spring and summer is a great opportunity to dive into nonfiction as your child becomes fascinated with bugs and bicycles and sandboxes and trips to the beach. I am going to challenge myself to try to actively seek out nonfiction books/magazines/websites for Isadora that I think she might be interested in and I'll share them with all of you. If you are reading this (if anyone reads this at all - besides my husband of course - I force him) please share any non-fiction materials that you find to be successful with your preschooler!

Alphabet Bingo

Alphabet Bingo is a fun game that can reinforce letter names.

Aak! I've been working on my dissertation day and night, leaving little time to update and add new stuff. I'm doing well now and feeling good about where I'm at - only a few more weeks until I'm all done!!

But back to the interesting stuff - we were at a friends house for a birthday party the other day and we found a game of alphabet bingo stuffed among all the other toys. Isadora and I played a couple games and she seemed to really enjoy it (of course I'm sure it had nothing to do with me saying, "Wow Isadora, isn't this alphabet bingo a FUN game!? This is so much FUN!")

We got home and I looked up the game on Amazon, but it was fairly expensive for just a bunch of printouts. I decided that there must be something on the internet, and indeed there was! Here is the link to the webpage where I got it. I printed out two copies of the boards, cutting up one and then pasting the whole boards down to some construction paper. This is more work than I usually do for a literacy activity, but I figured that it's a game that we will be returning to often, so it's worth the 15 minutes I spent cutting and pasting. Then I just turned the letter cards over, call out the letter name, and we put coins over the letters that we each got. Isadora actually prefers to use poker chips, so we are using those now. There are supposed to be rules to filling in four in a row, or two at each side in order to win, but right now we are just filling up the boards.

*It also has uppercase and lowercase, something that I think is great. Once Isadora has mastered her uppercase, we will move to the lowercase.

Food for Thought: Invented spelling

Using invented spelling can strengthen your child's spelling and reading ability, while opening up fun ways to write letters and stories.
Lately Isadora has enjoyed writing notes to her friends. I think this stemmed from the activity we did with the Valentine's letters, because she now will list friends from preschool that she wants to write letters to - although I know it is just a ploy to break out the glitter and go crazy with the glue! In any case, we don't write a lot on them at all - just the names of her friends in fact. Instead of me writing the name for her though, I'm having her help me sound out the words using invented spelling. Invented spelling is where Isadora can sound out her friends name Koen, and write "KON" on her paper. When we wrote her friends name Eloise the other day, it looked like LOES. Before students can make sense of conventional spelling, they can use the sounds that they do know to construct words. This also helps them strengthen their ability to sound out words using phonics. Here is a great video clip that helps illustrate the strategy a little more. Although it is a video clip with first graders, you can easily see 1) how you can use invented spelling with your own preschooler, and 2) how you can gradually transition your child into conventional spelling as they become better able to sound out words.