Hi, I have a 4 1/2 year old daughter. She is very smart. I am trying to run on a kindergarten level with her. Here’s what we do and I would appreciate any feedback you may have. Basically we work on learning to read, math, and she taps in on some other subjects that I do with my 9 year old. We read the Children’s Bible and she retains some but of course not all that my 9 year old does. She does science with us, and retains some there. We do map exercises online and she has learned the continents and oceans, where as my son was learning the countries in Africa. They both btw do excellent with maps online. So, History, Science, Maps. Then the main thing I focus on with her is reading and math. As far as math goes we have done the following: she can say, count, and write 1-10. We do hands on and workbook pages for preschool-kindergarten. We have now moved into adding and I think she’s doing good. (But always have a fear that I am doing something wrong, like maybe I’m teaching adding and should be teaching some other math, idk) We have those magnetic numbers and symbols and math you see blocks and we layout number sentences…………..1 + 2 = 3, she can do it with just the blocks, and now is doing it with the numbers. She was even adding in her head in the car last night. I asked her three different problems…………I said if you have one pencil and I have one pencil how many do we have and she answered two. Then we did 2+2 and 1+3 and she got those right, so to me I think we have found something that is working good and progressing…..what do you think? Next is the reading. She knows all alphabet letters, can say, write, and recognize. She knows the sounds they all make. She knows some word parts like: at, et, an, etc. I assume the next step would be decoding. I am trying to get her to hear the word when she has the two sounds such as: b—at, bat! She can do the b–at all day long but just can’t seem to ever hear bat. I’m not sure what I can do to help. What are some ways to teach her to read, this is the most important subject to me right now. My husband never learned to read in school and my son was going to the same school and falling into the same rut and now we do the best we can, I don’t want her to fall behind at this. Am I doing this right? Also, just so you know, we don’t spend a really long time on this stuff. I know she is 4 ane even though my son is 9 he has a very short attention span so we only work for about an hour a day. I worry too that that isn’t long enough (especially for my son) but at the same time if I spend 3 hours a day with him he’s going to shut down after one, so it’s wasted time in my opinion. We just have to do short to the point lessons. I am going to do another post about him and the amount I teach him b/c I would really love some feedback on that. Please look for that post too. ( I will probably title it……..Is this Enough?)
It sounds like she’s doing fine! Sometimes kids need to have time to mature a bit before they can hear and blend all the parts of a word. I tried off and on over a period of 2-3 years to work with this kind of thing with my son, and then one day when he was 6, he could just do it! It was all about his personal development.
I don’t know if it matters, but it might be better to try b-a-t rather than b-at. But that’s just how I would do it, so each sound is separated. I don’t know that it would help her blend any faster though!
You’re doing fine, just have fun with her. I think she’s doing great!