HI,
thanks for all the input and suggestions.
I have looked at reading bear.
All the sudden he now likes the STarfall Learn to Read App - Yippieh !
I need to be patient for him to "click" that letters make sounds and together they make words but he's on his way.

Thanks again for support and sharing your experiences. This forum is really valueable.

Best regards, Antje

Hello,

I would like some advice and experiences of people who have a three year old and have tried the whole word method and teaching letters.
My son is now 38 month old. I have done flash cards with him for about two years but not very consistently - he knows some words but he started to recognize letters a few months back.

I searched this forum and someone recommended the Leap Frog letter factory. I showed him the Leap Frog Letter factory video in 8-10 minute chunks and he LOVES them. He can recognize all the letters now - sometimes there are still difficulties with lower case letters but he knows all the sounds of the letters. We speak German at home but we have American friends so I would say to to him "We say "zet" for "z" and Jackie (a friend) says zzzz" - because some sounds are different in German and English. He does not like the Word Factory from the Leap Frog videos and unfortunately he doesn't like Little Reader any more. I have made a German curriculum for him and also used the English one but no luck for a few months now.

I also like the starfall.com website and the app they have for the ABCs and he LOVES it. He does not like Zac the Rat.
I try to teach him how to put the letters together with magnet letters and with all the big letters we see at stores or when we write something but lately I have had doubts if he is now forgetting the whole words that he used to know.
I think it hasn't "clicked" in his mind that the letter sounds need to go together to make a word. In German it would be so much easier than in English because we write as we speak.

I would also like to hear about people teaching their children to read in their native language and English in a non-English environment. Was there confusion on the side of the kids ? How do you make sure they develop a vocabulary.

I will continue to use Starfall and will try reading bear with my son, too.
Any advice or experiences are appreciated.

Thanks and Happy Holidays
Antje

Hi,

after receiving much helpful input here, I would like to share a little of my story.

My son was born in October 2010. When he was 11 months old I started showing him flash cards with the Doman methods for a few months. I always struggled with consistency and showing the cards like the book suggests.
A year ago I made new cards with pictures on the back and showed those to my son. He liked those cards much better and started recognizing letters like "o". I also showed him YBCR videos. He loves the songs.
I also made PPTs for him showing pictures of him doing things - like eating, playing, riding his bobbycar.
I also used an erasable board to write out words for him.
My son was not very verbal until a few weeks ago. He has now turned into a chatterbox, which is lovely.

I am very excited to report that he knows about half the letters of the alphabet.
He also knows about 10 words - he is now 34 months.
He asks to "write words" with magnetic letters on a board that we have accessible for him.
He recognizes the STOP sign when we ride in the car and he knows that it ends with the letter "P" like "Papa".

It feels really good to have this kind of feedback - it's taken about 20 months for this kind of feedback.

I will continue with showing him the cards, LR and the videos and try to create more input.
We are also doing puzzles and learning lots of new words verbally every day with him.

It's so exciting to see that it really is possible to teach my child to decode words and hopefully to read !
Thanks for the support in this forum !

Antje

Thank you very much ! This helps.

Hi,
I have downloaded a lot of the cantegories and word lists that other people have provided here in the downloads section.
I noticed however that when I play those words and they don't have a sound attached to them the pointer doesn't work at all.
Is there a way to still have the pointer slide under the word even if there isn't a sound attached to the word ?

My use case is the following:
I have a ton of German words now - similar to the English curriculum but I would just say those words when watching LR with my son, I don't want to record my voice for every single word.

Any help would be appreciated.

Thanks !
Antje

Hi,

I am using Little Reader Touch and really like it !
However I only see the little arrow/pointer under the words during the wordsplit section. I would love to have it for multisensory and sight words as well.
The "Hide Pointer" is set to "0"/OFF.

Any ideas are appreciated !

Thanks. Antje

Thanks so much for the encouragement ! That's really helpful !

Hi,

I am from Germany and have a 2,5 year old son. I came across the whole Baby-Reading topic about 1,5 years ago. I found it fascinating, read Doman's book and also Larry Sanger's essay about Baby Reading.
I started making flash cards, powerpoints, different flash cards with pictures on the back but a problem has always been consistency. My husband and I both work and our son is in a daycare during the day. We read to him a lot during bed time and also during the day when we are home. He doesn't watch TV and only about 4 months ago I started showing him YBCR DVDs.
I likes them and can read "kick", "tongue", "nose" etc.. He can also read his name and can recognize some letters like O, M, P.
 I tried out LR and decided to buy it.

However, we don't speak English in our home generally - only when talking to friends in the US on the phone or on skype but not regularly.

I would love to hear experiences from other users whose native tongue is NOT English and who use LR to teach their children to read in English. Does it work, what are the experiences ? I can see that my son has no problem reading the parts of the body and I do translate for him "touch your xxx" or "point to xxx" or "where is your xxx". 
I want to make lessons in LR in German but time is always a problem with the jobs and I did buy LR to save me time of making new flash cards etc. all the time.

I would love to hear experiences of non-native English speakers teaching their children to read - did you first teach reading in your own language or did you try LR ?

Tnanks
Antje