What program are you using? My daughter struggled greatly, but was reading fairly well by 2nd/3rd grade. Eventually they overcome:)

I have started my boys on Ramalda S Spaldings Writing Road to Reading. The phonics cards have been awesome (I did use these for my daughter even though she was older). I started each boy with two and worked up from there. My oldest hasn't gotten through all of them (there are 75 phonograms), but is reading very well. My youngest has been working on the same nine sounds for the last few months. It is my fault he hasn't advanced. T and F lowercase look very similar and confuses him (he is almost 3).

I'd love to talk with you more about it. I know how frustrating it is when you feel you aren't getting through.

May the Lord give you insight and witty inventions to seal the sounds in your son's mind.

Here is a crazy thought. Have you tried a more tactile/kinesthetic approach? Have him trace the letters in sand as he sounds them out? Or, if he is like my boys - energetic - have him run a masking tape of the sound on the floor. Sometimes crazy things like that helped my daughter, sometimes it didn't. I think I will try the masking tape idea with my youngest on t and f. If nothing else, he gets to run in the house, he does that anyway.

shannon

Try saying that the letter makes a particular sound and emphasize the sounds of the letters to him rather than the alphabet part - that might help him integrate the thoughts. Also don't forget it is ok to make your lessons short so he won't get discouraged and blocked. It is not unusual for some children to start reading later. My boys both knew the sounds and could blend them together after patient work, but my oldest didn't really read independantly until around 4th grade. Now he has taken off. My 3rd Grader can read, but hasn't made the move to independance yet.

If you keep working with him and making it fun, he will get it. One day, he will just say "Aha!"

God Bless, MeritK @ Creative Learning

Don't worry about him matching the grade level based on his age, instead teach him where he is at. Try having a letter of the week, where you focus on JUST one letter for the whole week, make it out of playdough, make it with glitter and glue, find things that start with that letter, draw it in sand, cut a giant one out of construction paper. Also try having him play at http://www.starfall.com and I think there is an actual letter of the week website too, I am not sure what the web address is. I thought of the letter of the week thing before I ever had internet access, and then found out someone else had the same idea.

Also, try making finger puppets with velcro dots to hold letters, then one puppet at a time says the letter sound and the get faster and faster until the child guesses the word. For instance, the one on the child's left has a "C" and you wiggle it and say /k/, the one in the middle has an "a" and you wiggle that next and say the short a sound, the one on the child's right has a "T" and you wiggle that last and say /t/. Then you do it again faster, and again, until the child puts the three sounds together and says "Cat".

Edited by ThriceBlessed on Nov. 7, 2007 at 1:20 AM