At what age did your child start reading?

[Belle2Be]

Originally Posted by wvcherrybomb

One of my 2 year old grandsons has lots of sight words. He loves to "read" books and will sit still looking through them for long periods of time. My other grandson, who will be 2 next month, won't even sit still long enough to have one page read to him. I guess reading age is somewhat dependent on personality.

I'm sure it is. She(3 year old) didn't used to sit still for a book, it might just be an age thing. My youngest however, will sit and cuddle and "let" you read a book over and over and over and over....(she's 21 months).

[TallMomof2]

I read to my kidlets from birth. Neither really started reading on their own until elementary school. Both are now teenagers and my son reads some, mostly graphic novels and magazines, and my daughter reads novels both graphic and regular.

[silverraven]

Just want to say thanks for the Peter and the Wolf link. I had the same version, and LOVED it as a child!
Thanks!
S

[RolandD]

I could read Green Eggs and Ham at three, but really I had it memorized.

Both my daughters could read at four, but my oldest was more interested. She was reading chapter books in Kindergarten and read the first Harry Potter in First Grade. Her first 'real' novel, as she says. My youngest lagged about a year behind her sisters schedule. Now in their teens they are both voracious readers. They did have some problems with the Accelerated Reading program, though. Many of the books they wanted to read were not in the program, or were so advanced that they were not allowed to take the tests for them in their grade level.

On a side note, I found books boring for many years and stuck to comic books and encyclopedias well into high school. My parents provided me with numerous sets of encyclopedias and I would read them cover to cover, one after the other. One set, Master Plots of Masterpieces, allowed me to test high in my AP lit class without having to read those 'boring' old masters. The book that really opened up reading to me was The Red Pony by John Steinbeck during my sophomore year.

[RolandD]

Originally Posted by silverraven

Just want to say thanks for the Peter and the Wolf link. I had the same version, and LOVED it as a child!
Thanks!
S

I listened to Peter and the Wolf many, many times. I had a stack of those Disney story-records that was 6-8 inches tall. They probably contributed a lot to my reading abilities.

[Nathanael]

Originally Posted by Maggie Leung

I dunno how to draw a clear line between reading and memorization for kids

There is none. Memorization is, in my experience, the key to learning to read. While that may be more true for Chinese, it is still true for English as well. Viz., Dolch words. Relying entirely on phonetics in teaching kids to read is -- pardon the pun :-) -- taking the slow boat to China.

--Nathanael

[Belle2Be]

Originally Posted by Nathanael

There is none. Memorization is, in my experience, the key to learning to read. While that may be more true for Chinese, it is still true for English as well. Viz., Dolch words. Relying entirely on phonetics in teaching kids to read is -- pardon the pun :-) -- taking the slow boat to China.

--Nathanael

There's actually a pretty big difference. Site reading only works if words are the exact same font etc. So the books that my daughter can site read, I can write the same words and she wont be able to read them. That's memorization, and effectively useless in "real" life. The only thing it's good for is cultivating an interest in reading from early on.

[ardeegee]

Originally Posted by Belle2Be

There's actually a pretty big difference. Site reading only works if words are the exact same font etc.

I bit my tongue the first time, but:

Site

Sight

[Belle2Be]

Originally Posted by ardeegee

I bit my tongue the first time, but:

Site

Sight

Thanks, I know the difference between the two words. I've just always discussed it as site reading, so a better clarification would be that it is called "sight reading" and not "site reading".
I should also note that since this isn't a literacy assignment or forum, and next time you feel the urge to critique someone's grammar, you should think about the fact that English is not everyone's first language and maybe just send them a PM instead.
Cheers!

[Miss Understood]

We were pretty poor when my oldest son (he's 20 now) was little and about age 15 months his favorite "game" was to bring me a note pad and pen where I would draw letters and teach them to him as well as spell out words like Mom, Dad, Cat, Dog. . .etc. He started reading really simple books at age 18 months and could read books like the "topsy turvy" books by age 2. My younger boys didn't start reading until they were about 3.

[Dulin's Books]

my oldest was reading by 2 1/2. At 3 he was sitting at day care reading books aloud to the other kids while they waited for the parents to pick up. Hes 6 now and in kindergarten. they say he's reading at a 5th grade level now but really he can read anything ( in english) you put in front of him phonetically. My wife still thinks its a trick

My younger son is 2 1/2 now and he's not really reading yet at all. he has his letters down and knows his name and his brother name if you write them but thats about it.

[jrlewis]

My daughter is 2 and a half, and she knows the alphabet and can recognize a lot of written words, and she is developing the ability to sound words out for herself. She loves to sit with her books and "read" by herself out loud. We can see her learning new words and reading better every day. She's also learning to write pretty legibly using a Leapster.

[Poppaea]

When I was 3 I used to ask all grown ups why it was they could read and I could not. My granny answered that was she had learned how to do it. That earned her the job to teach me.

When I was four they made me read the newspaper for entertainment because I used to read the text I did not understand with a very funny expression.

I also had a habit to read to all the children in the neighborhood aloud. As no one else was able to read they said I would make up the stories and when I answered, no, you can have a look yourself, they would always beat me up. So reading taught me fighting for myself and for knowledge

[Nathanael]

Originally Posted by Belle2Be

There's actually a pretty big difference. Site reading only works if words are the exact same font etc. ... That's memorization, and effectively useless in "real" life. The only thing it's good for is cultivating an interest in reading from early on.

I'll preface my remarks by saying that I'm an English educator by profession. I'm also father to a five-year old, which I often feel has taught me more than all my years of professional training combined.

I'll try to clarify my remark with an illustration from my daughter:

Several months ago, I decided it was time to teach her how to read an analog clock. First, I googled, and came up with things like "Teaching How to Tell Time - Lesson 1 of 5" (http://www.time-for-time.com/lesson1.htm), or "How to Teach Your Child to Read a Clock" (http://www.ehow.com/how_5168832_teac...ead-clock.html), which said silly things like "Reading a clock can be a challenging skill for a child." and "Learning to tell the time ... sometimes can even takes years to master." Most of the sites I found promised it would take weeks or months for my daughter to learn how to read a clock.

So I tried their approach: "See, a clock has three hands. An hour hand, a minute hand and a second hand. There are sixty seconds in a minute."

And my daughter's eyes had already glazed over. "Rubbish," I said. I turned off the computer and proceeded to teach her how to read a clock in fifteen minutes:

"Read the short hand first. Where is it now?"
"Nine."
"Right. Now where's the long hand?"
"Twelve."
"Good. When the long hand's on the twelve, we say 'o'clock'. So what time is it now?"
"Nine o'clock."
"Right. Now if the long hand's on the six, we say 'thirty'. So what time is it now?"
"9:30." We then spent four or five minutes pushing the hands around the clock, until she had it all down pat.

"Now, when the long hand's on the three, say 'fifteen'. And when it's on the nine, say 'forty five'." We practiced quarter hours for another five minutes, and we were done. One fifteen minute lesson and my four year old daughter could read an analog clock to within fifteen minutes.

Perhaps the most fundamental trait that separates us cognitively from other animals is our innate ability to think in abstractions - to impose categories and organization on all the raw sensory data we collect. It's the foundation to nearly everything we do cognitively.

We adults are so accustomed to going from the general to the specific -- applying abstracted principles to specific instances -- we've completely forgotten that the ability to abstract is itself a learned skill. But we don't abstract in a vacuum -- we need raw data to abstract from. For example: point a toddler at three objects in your living room and say "chair", and it's really amazing how quickly the budding Aristotelean abstracts the idea of "chair"; within minutes she's identifying chairs all over the house. But she needed the raw data first.

The problem is, we adults try to force children to think in abstractions the way we do. The time-telling sites all shared the same pedagogical approach: teach the kid to understand abstract principles like "minute", "hour" and "sixty seconds to the minute", then show him how to apply all that to a clock.

But that's completely backward pedagogically. Young children are still firmly rooted in the data-gathering phase of learning. And this is where memorization plays its role. My daughter doesn't need an Einsteinian grasp of time or to be able to count by fives or any other such silly thing just to read a clock face. She simply needs to memorize a few key points: read the short hand first; say "fifteen" for three; and so forth. All the rest she'll abstract on her own.

Maggie said she doesn't know how to draw a "clear line" between memorization and reading. I said there is none, and there isn't.

As with most children, my own daughter's first attempts at "reading" were simply reciting from memory words she'd heard over and over again. You say that's not reading. But where do you draw the line? Memorize a sentence -- that's not reading? Memorize words, (viz., Dolch list) is that reading? Hooked on Phonics -- is that reading? But phonics is just memorization at the phoneme level. After memorizing "hat" and "cat" (flashcards, anyone?), for example, my daughter was able to pick out "rat" and "bat". But she had to memorize the phonetics first.

The reason Maggie has a hard time finding a clear line is because there isn't any. Memorization is the sine qua non not just of reading, but of everything we do cognitively.

--Nathanael

[DMB]

I taught my daughter to read when she was 3. I had no parallel interest in teaching her to write, but I let her type. When she started school at four-and-a-half, she was a really fluent writer but couldn't write, apart from her name. She could, however, type quite a bit.

My son was dyslexic and was a slow reader. He eventually caught up and overcame his initial difficulties, although writing was torture for him at first. He was saved by learning fast touch-typing and as a result his writing improved enormously as well.

Both of them, now long grown up, read a lot.