Keeping Reading going during the Holidays

Every school I know has now broken up for the holidays, and while it’s definitely the most wonderful time of the year, it can be the most stressful time too! We all know we need to be keeping reading going during the holidays, but with so many other things going on, it can be easy to push it to the side.

We know reading is the most valuable part of our little ones’ education. Reading is the root to all other forms of learning, including maths! (Remember all of those wordy questions?) The great thing is, this means that ensuring your child keeps their progress going over the holidays is as simple as reading to and with them. But even that can seem overwhelming at a time like this.

Below I’ve written some ways to keep reading going during the holidays that will hopefully make it stress free! It might even be the easiest thing you do all Christmas!

Keep to a schedule

Whatever schedule you use during term time, try to stick to it. If you read with your little one first thing in the morning, keep doing so! Equally if you read as part of your bedtime routine, keep it up. Keeping consistency even when your child isn’t at school will help them continue to value reading, showing them that it’s not just something they do at school. It also helps them transition from school to home and back again, something that lots of kids struggle with.

As always, I recommend having 2 reading sessions a day, one where your child reads to you (or with you – check out more information about this here – How to engage your child with reading) and one where you read to them. This gives them a chance to continue to enjoy books without the added pressure of having to work every time!

Utilise the Library

The library is the most amazing resource, especially around the Christmas holidays! Not only is it a warm space that doesn’t require any money to go to, there are often lots of events on in your local library around Christmas, specifically for your little one. From interactive story sessions to lessons on how to find books, the library is fantastic for engaging your little one with books and stories.

The library is also fantastic for finding books that your child is excited by. Giving them a few minutes to find books by themselves will make them more excited to read them later. It also gives them a little bit of independence and control over what they’re reading.

Call on relatives

Christmas tends to be a time when families come together to celebrate or just catch up. If your family is the same, utilise it! Encourage your little one to show off their reading skills, or get your relatives to take some time reading to the kids. Not only is it a fantastic way to keep reading going during the holidays, it also helps foster bonds between your child and people they see less often. It’s particularly good if you have a child who is nervous around new people, as reading a book doesn’t require them to interact. They can just sit and listen until they feel more confident.

It’s also a great way to engage several children at once, giving the other adults a minute or two to deal with the other parts that come with Christmas, or just give them a break!

More than books

Remember that reading doesn’t just have to focus on books. It’s perfectly possible for your little one to get reading experience from magazines, comic books or writing on food boxes! Even putting the subtitles on the telly while you’re watching something will have an impact on your child’s reading, though it won’t completely replace reading with or to an adult!

Playing games

The final thing you could try over Christmas is playing a variety of games. They keep your child entertained, can be done by lots of different family members, and boost your child’s reading skills. For some ideas on games to play, try my blog on listening games, or take a look at the bunches of resources I offer for each age group and phonics phase in the shop!

Thank you so much to everyone who’s supported me this year, whether it’s been by reading my blogs, checking out my facebook or instagram, or simply being there. I’m truly grateful for each and every one of you. You really keep me going!

If you’d like to follow me on facebook or instagram, click on the links below! I’d love to have you!

Last but not least, Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays! I hope it’s a wonderful time for everyone!

08/12/2022

Help your 3 year old with reading

How to help your 3 year old with reading!

Reading is so important. It connects us to the world and allows us to become independent. So obviously, we want our children to be able to read. And because you’ve clicked on this blog, I’m going to assume you want to know how to support your 3 year old with reading.

In previous blogs, I’ve mentioned the importance of not teaching your child letters too young. There’s no evidence that it’s beneficial and can even be detrimental!

But I get it, you’re a parent! You want to do the best you possibly can for your child. You want them to have a ‘leg up’ in life. And that feels like it means they need to learn to read as early as possible.

Interestingly, recognising letters early doesn’t support with reading and is often focused on to the exclusion of far more important elements. There are so many other things that we can do as parents to support our kids with reading the twill have a much greater impact.

If you haven’t already read my blog – how to teach your 2 year old to read – you might want to go and check that out before reading this to find out the fundamentals, but otherwise, let’s dive right in!

Helping 3 year olds with reading.

Firstly, carry on with everything you’ve been doing before. All the rhymes, the songs, the conversations, the vocal sounds and the games will be giving your child a fantastic foundation for the next step – blending and segmenting!

Even though these are words that are often included when we talk about reading books, it’s so important that our children are able to blend and segment before they’re ever introduced to letters.

Blending

Blending is the process of putting sounds together to make words. When you’re first trying this with your child, keep the words simple and short, and model pushing the sounds together yourself. For example, when you’re at the breakfast table say ‘please can you pass the c-u-p, cup’. By doing this, you’re showing your child how to listen to the individual sounds and push them together.

Segmenting

Segmenting is the opposite of blending. It’s breaking words down into their smallest sounds. This is much harder for children to learn. Use short words and start by encouraging them to recognise the initial sound in the word, then challenge them to say the other sounds. Saying the word very slowly can help!!

Listening to adults model blending and segmenting is a great way to scaffold learning for our children and will make it easier for them to do later on in their education. Segmenting and blending words here and there during the day will help them to hear each individual sound in words, a much smaller unit of sound than it seems!

Comprehension

Comprehension of stories should still be being developed, focusing mostly on retelling what has happened with pictures as prompts, such as ‘what happened to Humpty Dumpty?’ and answers to direct questions about what they’ve just read. If you’d like to find out more about what questions to ask to help your child, check out my blog – Demystifying Reading Comprehension – here!!

The most important thing you can do to help your 3 year old learn to read is to talk to, and play with, them! Children learn so much from their parents, and vocabulary is one of the biggest and most important. The average 3 year old knows 450 words, but by 4, they know as many as 1000 words. And the difference? Conversation! The more you talk to your child, the more their vocabulary grows, and the easier they’ll find it to recognise words on paper later on.

If you want to support your child further and get more individualised support for both you and your child, check out the Raising Readers Community, where you can learn all about teaching the pillars of reading, how to ensure you’re getting the most out of reading with your child, and how to fit learning into your day with no extra preparation needed from you. Even just a 3 minute activity a day makes a huge difference. Check it out!

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30/11/2022

Helping kids calm down

Helping Kids Calm Down

In a previous blog post of mine – How to talk to your child about emotions – we talked about the importance of verbalising emotions and sharing our own feelings with our children so that they can understand and identify what they’re feeling. And while talking about emotions is vital, being able to name what they’re feeling doesn’t always help our children regulate their emotions and calm themselves down. So this week, I want to focus on exactly that – what we can do to help our kids calm down.

Before we jump in, I want to mention how important it is that we are supporting our children to calm themselves down, rather than needing our support every time. This is a long process, and I don’t know any child who is able to calm themselves down without mum, every time! But it’s a goal that we want our kids to be working towards. Unfortunately (or fortunately!), we can’t be with our kids every hour of every day, so we want them to have the tools and skills to support themselves. Below are a range of tools that we can teach our children to support them with their emotions. Most of them I use myself too!

It’s also important to remind our children that all emotions are okay to feel, so why we might want to calm down from them (because being overwhelmed by any feeling can be scary), it’s okay that we feel them!

3 Strategies to help your kids calm down

Recognise physical reactions

This was one that I actually only learned a few years ago. I’ve since done it in every single class I’ve had and it’s made such a difference.

Every emotion has a physical reaction on our body. Understanding and recognising that reaction can help us to become aware of our feelings, take us out of that initial reaction, and calm ourselves down.

For example, when I’m angry, my shoulders go up, my forehead creases, my heart rate speeds up and my eyes begin to burn (I cry when I’m angry. It’s very frustrating!). Equally, when I’m anxious, my shoulders go up, my eyebrows try to crawl into my hair and it feels harder to breath. Being aware of this (and in fact, taking the few seconds to recognise these reactions within my body) helps me to change the physical reactions: Lowering my shoulders, relaxing my forehead, taking the time to breath. Changing these physical reactions takes you out of that moment of overwhelm and helps you to control your emotions.

It’s exactly the same for our little ones. Encourage them to recognise how their emotions are effecting their bodies. Point out the visual ones and ask them questions about the ones you can’t see, for example, “How does your heart feel? How does your breath feel?” By identifying these things and being able to answer these questions, your little one has to focus on something other than what has made them angry.

Those few seconds gives them a chance to calm down, think more clearly and focus on what made them feel that way. Once they can verbalise what made them angry or scared (or whatever the big emotion is), they can begin to work on solving the problem.

Deep breathing

Taking a deep breath is one most people know about. Again, it does the same thing as the above, taking a second to think about something other than what has made your little one angry, upset, overwhelmed. One deep breath also helps children to control their physical reactions. It gets air into their lungs, which pauses that panic moment that can often happen for little ones when emotions get too big.

It also helps your child be able to talk. So often, I’ve seen children not be able to tell me what’s wrong because they’re too upset. Taking a breath and calming down just a little, makes it so much easier to solve whatever the problem is.

I often use the phrase “Take a deep breath for me, and then we can talk about it” so that they know why they’re taking a breath and that I am focusing on them and wanting to help. I like to put my hands flat out in front of me so that they can put their hands on mine as I model breathing. I move my hands up and down slowly, in time with my breaths. This gives an extra, sensory, element for your child to focus on. When they become more confident in this, they can move their hands for themselves, without adult support.

Count to calm down

If deep breathing isn’t helping, counting can be another option. Again, it focuses on something other than whatever has caused the big emotion. It’s particularly useful for children who need just a little bit more time. At first, try to count with your child to show you’re there to support them. When they’ve done this a few times, encourage them to count without you, but with you still physically there. The more experience they have with this, the easier they will find it to do by themselves.

Talk about strategies and use visuals to help your kids calm down

It’s really important to keep a dialogue about the strategies they can use to calm down, even when they’re not actively feeling those emotions. Books and stories can be really useful in creating these conversations as you can talk about characters and how they’re feeling, separating your child from the emotion, but still talking about strategies to help them calm down. This will help your child to remember them when they feel the same way.

Another support is using visuals. Cards with strategies on them are great for reminding your little one what they can do when they become overwhelmed, and having them easily accessible (or even up on walls where your child often is, such as the kitchen table, or where they play) can help them remember without your support.

Ask for their input / Self-reflection

Finally, it’s really useful to know your child’s opinion on these strategies. Are there certain ones that they find more useful than others? Are there ones that they don’t think help that much? Maybe there are other things that they’ve learned elsewhere that they want to try. Schools often have their own strategies to calm down, and you may want to include this when talking to your child about it to create consistency. Whatever you do, keeping an open dialogue with your child about emotions and how to deal with them will help them gain confidence and control over their emotions and lead to them finding it easier to calm down in the long run.

If you’ve found this helpful, feel free to look at my other blogs on the subject and join my Facebook group – Reading in Reception – where you can get additional tips and support for your Reception child!

If you’re really concerned about your child’s emotions and want extra help, check out this blog – When to seek help – verywellfamily.com

23/11/2022

How to talk to your child about emotions.

Have you ever watched your child have a meltdown over something completely innocuous (like the orange juice not being orange enough) and wondered what on Earth they’re doing? Well, the truth is that your child is probably feeling exactly the same! Little ones find big emotions very difficult to process. They may not understand what they’re feeling, or why they’re reacting to how they’re feeling. This is why it’s so important to talk about emotions with our little ones, to help them feel safe and aware of themselves (and it has the bonus of making those surprise meltdowns much easier to handle!)

Below are some ways to support your little one with understanding their emotions, as well as a few tips for calming them down!

Normalise talking about emotions by narrating your own.

Talk about how you’re feeling regularly. Whether it’s a positive emotion or a negative one, it’s helpful for your child to hear how you’re feeling and why. This helps them understand their own emotions and what causes them.

Name their emotions.

When they’re clearly feeling a strong emotion, whether positive or negative, let them know what they’re feeling. It might seem obvious that they’re angry or sad or excited, but they may not know that! Verbalising it for them helps give them the vocabulary to talk about it themselves. For example “I can see you’re angry because we can’t have ice cream for dinner” or “You look like you’re really excited to visit grandma”.

Validate feelings / show acceptance

It’s really important that we show our children that all emotions are normal and okay to feel. Talking about and acknowledging emotions (like we did in the previous paragraph) is fantastic for validating our children’s feelings. It’s important to make sure we don’t attribute positive or negative views on these emotions. For example, letting our children know that it’s okay to feel angry will help them acknowledge that feeling, rather than feeling guilty about it. This can be hard to do, particularly if (like me) you were raised to feel you should always ‘put on a brave face’ or not make a scene. That doesn’t mean we should tell our children it’s okay to throw a tantrum in public or hit people though, and that leads neatly onto our next paragraph:

Talk about the difference between feelings and behaviours.

While all feelings are valid and it’s important to accept how we and our children are feeling, there are behaviours which are not so great! It’s important to explain to our children that how we react to our emotions is important. Hitting, for example, is not a good way to respond to being angry, and screaming is not a good way to respond to being excited. We, as parents, need to support our children to recognise appropriate responses. For example “I can see you’re angry because we can’t have ice cream, but hitting is not okay because you might hurt someone. Let’s try stamping our feet instead”.

Modelling how you deal with these emotions is also fantastic as your child learns most by watching you. When you’re cross you could try “I’m frustrated that we’re running late, so I’m going to take some deep breaths to help me feel better.” And then show your little one how you take three deep breaths to help you. This shows them not only how you’re feeling, but also how you’re regulating yourself by taking deep breaths. Next time they feel frustrated, they are more likely to remember that and try it themselves (not that this will happen instantly, it definitely takes time, but each time gives them another chance!)

Use books to talk about how the characters are feeling.

Books are a fantastic way to begin conversations about emotions and how to deal with them. Taking about how characters are feeling is a really good way to discuss emotions in a calm environment where your little one can think clearly. It’s much harder to consider how you’re feeling in the moment! You can also make links between how a character is feeling and how your child has felt in the past. For example, “Have you ever felt like that? What made you feel like that? What did you do?”

This is also a fantastic way to consider how the character deals with the situation and what your child thinks of the reaction. Did they react in a good way? What do you think they should have done? This can be a great way for children to recognise ways of coping and calming down.

One book I would recommend for this is Becca Talemaimaleya’s ‘I Can Calm Down’ which gives lots of strategies to help your child calm themselves down, written in child friendly language and with lots of visuals. Definitely worth a read if you have a child who struggles to think of ways to calm down.

Nursery rhymes are also a great way to discuss emotions of characters. You can find out more here – Do Nursery Rhymes help our Children?

When to seek help:

If you’re still worried about your child and want more information about when to seek additional help, check out this blog – https://www.verywellfamily.com/when-do-child-behavioral-problems-require-professionals-1094789

If you’ve found this blog helpful, check out a few of the other ones I’ve written below. And if you’d like more individualised support, join my facebook group or instagram by clicking the icon!

16/11/2022

What book levels should your child be reading?

What books should my child be reading?

Book levels and bands

I want to preface this blog post by saying that not all schools follow the same way of marking their book levels, and not all book schemes are kind enough to match the colour levels (Though thankfully, Oxford Reading Tree does!). I will do my best to cover the different levels of book bands, but please take it with a pinch of salt!

In school, children are often told they are on a certain ‘colour’ of book. This is meant to make it easier for everyone to know where the child is in their reading journey and help parents support with reading at home. But book bands are very rarely (if ever) explained.

I’m hoping to make it a bit clearer for you, and also give you some tips on how you can choose books for your little one, even if they aren’t colour coded.

Book band colours

Most ‘early reading books’ are marked with a colour, corresponding to how hard they are to read. Below, I will give a quick overview of what happens at each level.

With reception books, it’s good to focus on spaces between words, punctuation, sounding out CVC words (consonant-vowel-consonant) and spotting common high frequency and tricky words (like – the, I, etc.)

Pink – Reception

Quite repetitive, very short. Usually read with an adult. These books are used to get children recognising words and the spaces between them. Children are not expected to read these to themselves or with support. They may start to remember some very common words though!

Red – Reception

Very similar to pink books. Again, these are designed to be read with an adult with very little reading from the child. Focus on comprehension questions to develop understanding and recognising some tricky words.

Yellow – Reception

I have known many Year 1 children who start on these books.

Children are able to read a word or two themselves by blending, and should be recognising a few high frequency words. There are slightly more words per page, though the sentences are likely still repetitive.

With year 1 books, children begin to read words without blending and more fluency. Some children may whizz away and be able to read longer words without hesitating, while others will be able to read shorter words by sight and sound out longer words. It’s a good idea to work on ‘chunking’ longer words to help children remember different parts of them.

Blue – Reception/Year 1

Children often reach Blue books in the first term of Year 1. There are usually more words that can be blended (including digraphs) and more varied sentences. Children are more likely to be able to read a whole sentence by sounding out and recognising tricky words. They don’t need to be reading fluently though, and will still be sounding out most words! Books begin to have CVCC or CCVC words in them.

Green – Year 1

Children are able to recognise or blend most of the sounds in words. They are able to recognise punctuation, meaning they might pause at full stops or commas. This is when most children start to say some common words without blending them out loud. The books get a bit longer and children work on their reading stamina by trying to read longer and longer sections! There are usually more consonants blends in words.

Orange – Year 1

Again, these books get harder. Children might be reading multi-syllable words and should be recognising a broader range of tricky words (phase 5 tricky words for example). Again, children blend words more rarely and their reading becomes more fluent. Books normally have between 4 and 5 sentences to a page.

At this point, the Year groups become a little mixed up! Some children will be happily on Purple books in Year 1 and some will be happily on Orange books in Year 2. As long as your little one is enjoying reading and is moving towards reading without sounding out, they’re doing great!

Turquoise – Year 1/2

At this point, children should start to be able to read with expression and not be using the picture to work out what will happen next. They will be almost fluent readers, and will be tackling longer books with more sentences and smaller pictures.

Purple – Year 1/2

In real terms, at this point a child might well be considered a ‘free reader’ in that they can feasibly pick up any book and read it. They might begin reading in their head and will be comprehending what they read much more quickly. This is where we encourage as much comprehension as we can, particularly with inferences! For more information on this, check out my blog on comprehension!

Gold – Year 2

These are chunkier books, though still with large pictures. They tend to have around 10 sentences per page and your child should be able to read silently, sounding out only new words and quickly assimilating them into their vocabulary.

White – Year 2

The beginning of chapter books! While these chapters may be short, children are able to remember a lot of what they have read and explain it to someone else. They can also answer questions about the text as a whole.

Lime Green – Year 2/3

When your child gets to lime green books, it’s a fair bet to say that they can read most books fluently in their heads. They don’t tire easily when reading and understand almost everything they read.

As you can see, there is a bit of crossover when it comes to different levelled books and this is what makes it very hard to work out what level your little one should be on. Some books in a band will be harder than others and you may even find that they are harder than a book in the level above. I’m general, a child moves on when they can read 80% of the books in the band at the required level.

As I said, the levels at which children start to read each book band should be taken with a pinch of salt. Every class of year 1 children I have ever taught has had children on Yellow books and children on Purple books too! Every child learns at their own pace!

To recap –

pink-red – mostly read by the adult with a few blending words
Yellow – mostly sounded out by your child with phase 2 words
Blue – mostly sounded out by your child with digraphs/trigraphs
Green/orange – sounded out with some words not blended. Consonant blends
Turquoise/purple – reading without sounding out most words
Gold/white – reading in your head
Lime green – chapter books and increased reading stamina.

When should your child move up a book band?

Again, this is slightly difficult to answer as each phonics scheme has slightly different criteria. Some say your child should be able to read every word in a book confidently before moving on, and others say it should be only half the words. Equally, this can be difficult to work out in the lower levels, as some of the books must be read by parents in order to be understood.

I would suggest that your child moves up a level when they can recognise roughly 70% of words in most of the books they are given and can answer comprehension questions relevant to their age level (again, if you want help with this, check out my comprehension blog).

I do just want to mention that there can be a difference in what your little one reads confidently to you and what they read confidently in class. Reading in front of others can be worrying and may mean children don’t read as surely as they would at home. If this is what your little one is struggling with, it’s better to keep them on a lower book band until their fluency is higher, so boosting their confidence around others, rather than pushing them to read more complex texts and adding more stress in class.

If you are looking for an un-levelled book in the library, you want to be looking for;

Books with tricky words within your child’s phonics phase
Of the other words, they should be 80% words that your child can decode (words that can be sounded out)
Sentences per page similar to what your child is used to

If you’ve found this helpful, please check out my other blogs on this website, or join my Facebook group – Reading in Reception – where I offer more advice and support!

If you want to support your child further and get more individualised support for both you and your child, check out my course – Curious to Confident – where you can learn all about teaching the pillars of reading, become confident that you know where your child is in their reading journey, how to ensure you’re getting the most out of reading with your child, and how to fit learning into your day with no extra preparation needed from you. Check it out!

09/11/2022

How to engage your child with reading.

How to engage your child with reading

How to stop those ‘wiggle butts’ and get your child engaged with reading.

Are you someone who wonders how to engage your child with reading? Over the years, I’ve known many children who love being read to, will sit and listen for hours, but as soon as they’re asked to read, suddenly, nothing will persuade them to sit still!

In fact, this exact thing was mentioned when I was having a conversation with my friend. She said her little one (4) was so proud of her reading, and loved stories, but found it hard to stay engaged when reading herself. I gave her a list of things she could try to help, and she suggested I write them down. So that’s exactly what I’ve done!

Below are a series of things you can try to engage your little one with reading, whether they can’t read a word yet, or are ‘free readers’ but are occasionally reluctant to read to you. If you think of someone who might find it helpful, please share it!

Remember attention spans – make reading active to engage your child

A big part of the frustrations children face is with attention spans and focus. The average 4 year old has an attention span of 8-12 minutes. If a child is expected to focus for longer than this, it leads to frustration and that ‘wiggle bottom’ I mentioned at the beginning.

This doesn’t mean all reading sessions can only be 8 minutes long, however. In fact, a brain break of just a few seconds can be enough to help our little ones refocus. I used to do this in the classroom all the time. “Everyone get up, wiggle to the count of 10 and sit down again” and the kids would be ready for the next part of the lesson.

Making reading active has the same affect. When your little one is reading and the character in the book does something, encourage them to act it out. It gives them a few seconds to break away from the difficulty of reading and let’s you know they’ve understood what they read too!

Obviously you don’t have to do this every time the character does something, but once every few pages can be very helpful!

Switching child led reading to a different time of the day

Now, I can hear some of you saying, but we read just before bed! I don’t want to hype my little one up, I want to calm them down!

And to that, I say, it’s fantastic that you’re ending the day with reading! It’s a great way to do something calm together that will settle them down and is great bonding too! But could you maybe read to them at bedtime, and change the reading with them to a different time?

I know time can be very tight at home. It certainly is for me! But by getting them to read to you at a different time, you can separate work from bedtime and keep that as a calm, content time for both of you to enjoy, rather than getting them to work their brains when they’re most tired. And if you’re finding they resist reading, bedtime is not the best time for an argument either!

Instead, try reading for a few minutes first thing in the morning. You could try getting them to read a book to you while you get breakfast ready. Another option is reading straight after school. They’re already in the working mindset and as soon as it’s done, they get the whole evening to relax and decompress from school.

Routine is always ideal so whatever you choose, try to stick to it every day. It’ll help them adjust and reduce stress all round!

Shared reading

Shared reading is another fantastic way to lessen the load of reading off your little one, encouraging them to read more, while still getting the joy they have from you reading to them. Explain to them that you’ll read a page if they read a page. This also gives them time to look at the pictures while you’re reading, something that a lot of children miss when they start reading and are expected to move straight on to the next page. Equally, just giving them more time per page may encourage them to read more!

Ask for help with words

If your child is still struggling with shared reading, you can break it down even further. Start by reading the book to your child completely. Find a word you know they can read, either a tricky word, or one they can blend, and get ‘stuck’. You could say “I can’t remember this word, can you help me?” Or try and sound it out and then hmm. I’ve never met a child who doesn’t love correcting and helping an adult and this can be a very useful way of building confidence too!

Spot the word games

Another one to try is to choose a word from the book for your little one to spot. This could either be a word that appears regularly, or one that only turns up once or twice. Write it on a piece of paper and practice it with them before you start the book. As they go through, get them to point it out every time they spot it. They could get a sticker for each one (or just a high five, I find they work just as well!)

This helps children to engage with what they’re reading and counts as a brain break, as they have to check the word on each page. This becomes a sort of transition where they’re focusing on something else!

Ask questions that get them thinking – engage their brain, engage your child

Knowing whether your child has understood what they’ve read is another massive part of reading. Asking questions after each page or a few pages gives your child a second to think about something else, breaking up the book and making it more interesting. It also helps with processing skills and ensures their brain is focusing on more than one thing at a time.

If you’d like more help with comprehension skills, you can check out this blog – demystifying reading comprehension.

Reading a different language

The last thing I want to mention is just how hard reading is.

If you’re a literate adult without dyslexia or other difficulties, it’s probably the case that reading is quite easy for you. You may not ever sound out words or even think about what you’re reading. Learning to read was a very long time ago. You might not even remember it at all!

For our children, it’s very different. Each letter has to be worked out, matched to a sound, blended and then given a meaning to make a word. Below, I have given you the Greek alphabet and a sentence with the same letters (the words aren’t in Greek, just the letters have been changed). Have a go at decoding and reading the words. It will give you an idea of how much effort it takes our little ones to read! No wonder they’re tired at the end!

Λεαρνινγ το ρεαδ ις ηαρδ.

Just being mindful of the effort our little ones are putting in to reading can help both us and them. We can acknowledge how hard reading is, and praise their resilience and hard work. This helps foster the bond between us and lets them know we understand.

Whatever you try, remember that you’re doing an amazing job. Just by trying to read with your child, you’re setting them up for success and giving them support for the most important area of learning.

If you want to support your child further and get more individualised support for both you and your family, check out my course – Curious to Confident – where you can learn about the pillars of reading, become confident that you know where your child is in their reading journey, how to ensure you’re getting the most out of reading with your child, and how to fit learning into your day with no extra preparation needed from you. Check it out!

02/11/2022

When should my child start writing?

Should my child be writing more?

Writing can be a very stressful part of learning for both parents and children. Often, we feel that our child’s reading is ‘good enough’ or ‘getting there’, but their writing is barely just starting.

In my years in the classroom, I’ve often heard parents worry that their child can read CVC words, but can only write their name (and even that looks messy!). I’ve written this blog as an easy resource to help parents understand how writing progresses, how to help encourage writing (when your little one is ready) and hopefully calm some worries that your child isn’t writing!

Hand development and writing

The main reason why younger children find writing harder is due to physical development. In a child of 4, the bones of the hand are still growing and have not yet fused fully. Below are two x-rays. The one on the left is the hand of a 7 year old and the one on the right is a 4 year old. You can see how dramatic the difference is!

7 year old hand x-ray (left) – 4 year old hand x-ray (right)

As the bones and muscles are not fully developed, your child has less control over their grip than they will have in a few years. Trying to control their pencil at this stage may lead to them hunching their shoulder or balancing their elbow on the table, both of which can lead to more problems and discomfort. Encouraging your child to stand while they are writing (or wiggle, or jump or move in general) is actually helping them develop their core stability, and their motor skills!

Mark making and attributing meaning to shapes

Some children might be very keen to write at 4, but not every child is ready, just as not every child is ready to read, or skip, or play football! All children, however, want to create. Part of creating is ‘mark making’, which is an area that all children enjoy.

Mark making is exactly what it sounds like, making marks in a variety of ways. The next step is attributing meaning to the marks they make, and finally, writing. If your child is not ready to write (or doesn’t want to), mark making is an excellent step that encourages them to express themselves and builds fine and gross motor control at the same time!!

Mark making also does not have to be done with a pencil. In fact, until they have developed those muscles and skills in their fingers, regular pencils can be detrimental. Children just don’t have the control to use them! Instead, try chunky pencils, round paintbrushes, extra large chalks, stamps and finger painting. Making marks with these will help build wrist stability and finger isolation, making it easier for them to write in the future.

Building motor control – developing the skills for writing

In order to write, your little one needs to have a certain amount of development throughout their whole body. Building core strength helps children stay upright even when sitting down. Ever seen a child slumping at the dinner table? That’s because of their core strength! If they don’t have it, it can be exhausting trying to sit up straight.

Core strength can be developed by

Using climbing frames and other playground apparatus – balancing as children move around climbing frames helps develop core strength and stability, as does climbing up, down and around.
Sitting upright – when eating, encourage your child to sit up at a table. This helps them build their core muscles for short periods of time while they’re focusing on something else. If you eat with them, it can also help them with their communication and vocabulary skills!
Spending time outside – playing outside in a park or forest, offers so many opportunities for your little one to develop core strength. Climbing, jumping, even rolling on the floor, all help mobility and build core muscles!

As well as core strength, your little one needs to develop ‘gross motor skills’, which essentially means the muscles in their arms and shoulders. Imagine you’re holding a pen in the air. Easy! But then I say you have to hold it like that for an hour. Suddenly, holding a pen becomes much more difficult. It’s the same for our kids. If we ask them to write, we’re asking them to ‘hold the pen’, using the muscles in their arms and shoulders to keep control of it. Again, if they’ve built those muscles, easy! But if not it can become an exercise in frustration.

Gross motor control can be developed by

Climbing frames – climbing up and down helps with balance, core strength (to pull themselves up) and the muscles in their arms.
Drawing large pictures – big movements like large circles, lines and shapes help to develop the range of movement while also mark making.
Using different surfaces – instead of just writing on paper at a table, change the angle. Encourage your little one to write standing up against the wall, lying on the floor, or even upside down, under a table!

The final thing your little one needs is ‘fine motor control’ or the muscles in your fingers. This comes last because they are the smallest muscles and need all of the larger ones to work properly. These muscles control the tiny movements the pencil makes on the paper, forming letters. Again, they need to build strength in order to do this. Anyone who has ever had RSI knows how uncomfortable it can be to push your fingers past their comfort zone!

Things that can help your little one develop fine motor control:

Play dough – pulling, squishing and shaping play dough helps build muscles in the fingers and arms, which will help with writing later on!
Peg games – picking things up with tweezers or pegs helps build strength in the hand, making it easier to hold things, including a regular pencil.
Finger games in nursery rhymes – nursery rhymes that include finger movements (like incy wincy spider or Tom Thumb) help with finger isolation, helping your child learn to control each finger. This helps with pencil grip and control. If you’d like to find out what else your child can learn from nursery rhymes, check out this blog – Do Nursery Rhymes help our children?
Finger painting – again, this helps with isolation of movement, improving control (and it’s a lot of fun!)

A short introduction to pencil grip

I’m not going to write a whole section on pencil grip, but I do want to briefly go over the different stages and how the muscles are needed.

Fist grip – relies on core and gross motor skills
Pincer grip – begins to use fine motor skills as well, with some control of movement (using finger isolation)
Standard pencil grip – requires all the muscles skills! This is the hardest one for children to learn, though it’s the easiest one to use to control a pencil!

Whichever one your child is on, hopefully this will help you to know which stage they need to be working on next!

If you’d like to find out more, check out this blog – Pencil Grip – mylittlelearner

Reading before writing

You might have heard it said, a child needs to read before they can write. This is essentially true, though I’ve definitely met children who find writing easier! What it really means, is children need to be able to hear sounds in words before they can write them.

Developing listening skills helps our children to identify sounds in words, making writing much easier, what ever stage their muscles are at! If you’d like to learn more about listening skills, you can check out my blog here – 10 Listening Games that will help your child.

Valuing writing and self-expression

I could write a whole blog post on this – and may well, soon – but valuing writing in your daily life is a brilliant way to encourage your child to write.

Praising your little one when they mark make and encouraging them to tell you about what they’ve drawn or written shows that you value their effort and will solidify in their minds that writing is a good thing!

Equally, encouraging your little one to draw their feelings or ideas helps them begin to recognise the link between mark making and communication. Once they’ve made this link, it is likely they will be more enthusiastic about communicating in this way and eventually, writing down their thoughts.

If you’ve found this blog post useful or interesting, please join my Facebook group, where I regularly post tips and support for parents of Reception children. It’s a wonderful, supportive community for parents where you can share your wins and get answers to your questions. We’d love to have you!

26/10/2022

Demystifying reading comprehension

Demystifying Reading Comprehension

Demystifying Reading Comprehension – How do I know if my child understands what they read?

Comprehension can often be a sticking point with lots of parents. You read with your child everyday, you listen to them sound out words, maybe they’re even reading sentences, but you’re not sure if they really understand what they’ve read. Maybe their teacher has told you they need to focus on their comprehension, but you’re not sure how.

I’ve got you!

As a teacher, I often worked with children who could read the words, but needed to focus on their understanding, inference skills and identifying specific words in the text. Blending letters together is completely different from understanding what you read!

That’s why I’ve put together this blog going over the different levels of comprehension for a child under 7, and giving examples of how you can use questions to understand exactly where your child is in their understanding.

Blank’s Levels of Questioning – Comprehension broken down

While comprehension is a very broad topic, it can be useful to look at it in terms of questions and answers. If your little one can answer these questions, they understand what they’ve read, or what has been read to them. Blank, Rose and Berlin conducted a study based around comprehension and questioning that can be broken down into four different levels.

These levels start with concrete questions and answers such as pointing at a picture and asking “what is this?” and goes on to include abstract questions such as “How could we fix it?”. By Year 1, the average child should be able to answer questions on all 4 levels, though they might find inferencing and abstract questions need a bit of guidance!

Under 3 – Level 1 comprehension – Look for it!

These are questions where the answer is literally right in front of your child. They don’t have to do any deep thinking, they only have to understand what you’ve asked and point it out. This can be done with really little children and not just with reading! It involves using your eyes more than anything and so can be done by looking at pictures, around the house or outside. It doesn’t even require a book!

There are 4 subsections to this level.

Matching objects
Naming objects
Imitating a sentence
Recalling objects or information

Essentially, you ask your child a simple question, they find the answer and respond! Some examples are:

Can you find a ___?
What is this?
Can you spot the ____?
How many ____ were there?
What do you see?
What did you see?
What did I say?
Repeat after me.

3-4 – Level 2 comprehension – Look and think!

Moving on slightly from Level 1, now your child needs to think a little bit about what you’ve asked. Children should develop this ability around the age of 3 and it’s the first step towards thinking more deeply. You child needs to focus on the question a little more and identify what you’re asking for. It might include identifying objects by their characteristics, describing something, recalling information or identifying differences.

The answer is still easy to find, but there’s an added step! Again, these don’t only have to be applied to a book. You could ask them throughout the day!

Find something that is red
find something that you drink from
find something that is round and yellow (two characteristics)
find a vegetable
find an animal
What is happening right now?
What happened in the story?
What did the boy do?
What is the mum doing?
How are the dogs different?
Can you finish a sentence? I like…

4-5 – Level 3 comprehension – Using clues

Instead of the answer being right there, this level requires your little one to think for themselves and use clues from the book to think of their own answer. It’s the first step towards inferring what the author might be thinking of. They might take on the roll of another and describe how they’re feeling or predict what will happen next. These questions don’t need specific answers but do require your child to be a little inventive!

Talking about stories and events can happen anywhere, though it can be harder to do when following a story, so challenging your child to do these is an excellent step! Following instructions are also included in this level of comprehension, so it’s a good chance to challenge your child to do so, even if they (like most children) don’t want to!

What do you think will happen next?
How might she fix it?
What do you think they are going to do?
Put on your shoes and get your scarf.
Drink your milk and then you can have an apple.
How do you make a sandwich?
How do you brush your teeth?
How did they solve the problem?
How are these children the same?
Find something that is not green.
Find one that does not have leaves.
What is a ____?

5+ – Level 4 comprehension – Developing opinions

Now we start to encourage our children to develop reasoning skills, particularly, reasoning about their own opinions and explaining them to others. This is so important, not just in comprehension, but in life. Encouraging our children to explain why they think something enables them to communicate more thoroughly with those around them, and explain their views. This can help in the playground, the classroom and the home, leading to more confident children!

This level of comprehension requires higher level problem solving which is why it may take some children longer to develop this. Blank Rose and Berlin found that only 65% of 5 year olds could answer this level of questioning. It focuses on making predictions, explaining thought processes and coming to logical solutions.

What will happen if ___?
What do you think will happen if _____? Why?
Why wouldn’t that work?
Why can’t you cut bread with a spoon?
Why can’t you cut down a tree with a straw?
What made that happen?
Why did that happen?
How could they have done it differently?
What would you do?
How can you solve this?
How can you tell he is happy?
What word tells you she is sad?

Putting these into practice

Have a look at the picture above. In the story, the girl with her back turned has dropped her purse. Using the same picture, we can ask questions at all 4 levels.

Level 1 – Can you see an umbrella?
Level 2 – Find something that is blue.
Level 3 – What do you think will happen next?
Level 4 – What would you do?

Hopefully this shows how you can use different levels of questioning with any level of reading! If you have a child that finds reading harder, or hasn’t started to learn letters yet, you can still encourage their comprehension.

Final thoughts

Comprehension helps our children develop critical thinking skills that support them throughout their lives, not just in reading. Whatever stage of comprehension your child is currently at, asking questions and encouraging your child to expand on their answers is a valuable way of developing these skills.

I hope I’ve managed to give you some ideas for how to extend their learning! If you’ve enjoyed reading this, maybe check out one of my other blog posts, or click on the socials links below to be taken to my social media pages!

If you want to support your child further and get more individualised support for both you and your family, check out my course – Curious to Confident – where you can learn about the pillars of reading, become confident that you know where your child is in their reading journey, ensure you’re getting the most out of reading with your child, and how to fit learning into your day with no extra preparation needed from you. Check it out!

20/10/2022

Help your 2 year old with reading skills!

We all want our children to have the best advantages in life. That includes asking how you can help your 2 year old with reading. Read on to find out how you can help prepare them to read!

The terrible twos can be a very tricky time for most families, especially when your little one learns the word ‘no’! But it’s also the time that many parents start to think about education and how to give your child the best possible start. How can you teach your 2 year old all the things they need to know?

Reading is one of the most important things that your child will learn. Knowing how to read allows our children to learn so many different things in the future. It gives them independence.

But you knew all of that already. You want to know how to teach them when they’re young!

Evidence shows that learning letters early has little to no impact on a child’s ability to read later on, and in fact, can be detrimental and leave them struggling. Instead, children need to develop the skills for reading.

For some children, this comes naturally over time. For most, it needs to be taught.

Which sounds scary. It sounds like a lot of work. It sounds like you need to be giving your child that ‘instagram lifestyle’ in order for them to be alright. Which is rubbish. No one actually has that life that we see on instagram (I certainly don’t!)

There are loads of ways that we can be teaching our children reading skills in ways that don’t cause us extra stress. In fact, you might find that you’re doing most of them already!

Things you can do to help your 2 year old learn reading skills

Listening Games

I’ve written a whole blog on this here – 10 listening games that will help your child learn to read – but the essence of it is that reading requires children to be able to hear small units of sounds in words and blend the sounds together. By developing your child’s listening skills, you’re making it easier for them to identify sounds in smaller and smaller units, leading to them finding it easy to recognise them in words. (This also helps with segmenting words for spelling as your child can hear each individual sound more easily).

Starting to listen for more sounds in their environment is the first step towards recognising small units of sound in words, so try to take a moment’s breather and encourage your child to listen to the world around them and see how many different things they can identify. If you want more help with this, have a look at my 10 reading activities and sign up for my newsletter where I regularly send tips for reading!

Build Vocabulary

The average 3 year old already knows 450 words. By the time a child is 4 they know on average 1000 words! The wider a child’s vocabulary, the easier it is for them to work out words on a page and understand what they are reading.

There are lots of ways to develop a child’s vocabulary. I’ve listed a few example games below and am working on a more comprehensive list! If you want to be notified when it comes out, you can sign up for my mailing list here.

using interesting words around the house – try to use less common words when you’re playing with your children. Exposing the to a variety of words that mean the same thing will help their vocabulary grow, but remember, it takes 4-12 times hearing a new word before a child learns it! Some examples of words you could use are
- immaculate when something is clean
- marvellous or wonderful instead of good
- delicious or scrumptious instead of yummy
Categories – choose a category and list all of the things you can think of in this. The category could be anything, from kitchen objects to types of clothing. When you run out of objects, choose another category! This is an easy game you can play anywhere. While your 2 year old might run out of options quite quickly, as they get used to playing this game, they’ll find it easier to think of more and grow their vocabulary within that category!
This one builds on the last game. Encourage your child to build descriptors that match a category. For example, if your category is animals, challenge your child to explain what the animal does as well as what it is. What does the animal do? – A bird flies, a dog ___

Nursery Rhymes

Again, I’ve written a longer blog on this here – Do nursery rhymes help our children? – but nursery rhymes are incredibly helpful for teaching our children to read. Repetition, use of gesture and exploration of rhythm and rhyme all help our children to build their vocabulary, helping them to make links between words and their meanings. They also build our children’s attention spans, social skills and their understanding of the world!

Controlling our Voices

Voice control helps our children with making smaller and smaller units of sound, which they will later use to sound out words and blend them together. We can help our children develop this in a variety of ways

making sounds when our children are playing, such as ‘weee’ when they go down a slide
singing songs and nursery rhymes
say words in different ways, fast, slow, differences in pitch etc.
making animal sounds

Enjoying stories

Reading to your child every day helps to develop all of the above and is the most important part of helping your child learn to read at this age. Exposing your child to stories helps them build listening skills, attention, social skills and comprehension. Whether it’s you reading to your child personally, or giving them access to audio books, experiencing books and stories is the most important thing your child can do to become a good reader later on!

If you want to support your child further and get more individualised support for both you and your child, check out the Raising Readers Community, where you can learn all about teaching the pillars of reading, how to ensure you’re getting the most out of reading with your child, and how to fit learning into your day with no extra preparation needed from you. Even just a 3 minute activity a day makes a huge difference. Check it out!

08/10/2022

Do Nursery Rhymes help our children?

How do Nursery Rhymes help our children learn?

Do nursery rhymes help your child to learn?

I’ll answer this question quickly. Nursery rhymes help our children learn so many things!

Tell the truth, how many times have you sung ‘Incy wincy spider’ in your lifetime? If you’re a parent, it probably feels like the rhyme is permanently playing in the back of your head! There’s bound to be at least one that makes you think ‘If I never hear that one again, it’ll be too soon!’

Firstly, I completely know the feeling (I was leading Nursery when the whole Baby Shark craze happened. Every single child wanted nothing more than to listen to that song on repeat all day long. I honestly think it’s still the sound track to my dreams!).

However, while we may get sick of them sometimes, singing nursery rhymes is one of the best things you can do to help your child develop reading skills.

Did you know that the number of nursery rhymes a child knows has an impact on how well they read when they’re older?

“Experts in literacy and child development have discovered that if children know eight nursery rhymes by heart by the time they’re four years old, they’re usually among the best readers by the time they’re eight.’

Mem Fox – Reading Magic Tweet

Below I’ve broken down how nursery rhymes help into sections and a few ways you can make them more engaging for your child, and less repetitive for you!

How do nursery rhymes help?

When our children are very young, their attention spans are tiny. Sitting and ‘learning’ for prolonged periods of time just isn’t possible for them (even when they reach year 1 their attention spans only stretch to around 15 minutes!). Nursery rhymes offer short, bite-sized bursts of essentially ‘intensive learning’. Repetition of these rhymes also helps children develop their working memory. So those thousand repetitions of Twinkle Twinkle are actually hugely valuable!

They help children develop key skills and can inspire open-ended play where our kids can learn even more, following their own interests!

Language and communication skills

Starting from before birth children start to acquire language by listening to those around them. Nursery rhymes help by:

engaging their listening skills and helps them focus on the rhythm, helping them develop an understanding of language and speech patterns.
Saying nursery rhymes help children to develop their mouth and tongue muscles, helping them to say the sounds correctly.
Increases vocabulary with words our children may not regularly hear (such as spout in incy wincy spider).
Acting out the nursery rhymes helps children recognise and remember words they haven’t come across before (including things like directional words (up above in Twinkle Twinkle)

Social skills and Understanding the world

Nursery rhymes help to develop social skills, from working in pairs (row your boat), to recognising humour (animal fair), knowing nursery rhymes can help your child interact with others and provide comfort to themselves when they’re in uncomfortable situations.

Nursery rhymes are a staple, they can be sung anywhere and most people know them.
The connection between rhythm, the words and actions can make these rhymes a great group activity. Children work as a group and create a sense of belonging.
Using rhymes can build connections between the person singing and the child, it can be incredibly soothing for your child to listen to you sing (even if you can’t carry a tune in a bucket!)
It’s a good way to build connections between multiple generations. We’re still singing the same nursery rhymes our Grandparents sang!

Literacy skills

As I said above, nursery rhymes have been linked to reading skills and development, and it’s easy to see why! Nursery rhymes teach children so many skills that have a direct impact on reading.

They develop listening skills and sound recognition, helping children to hear sounds in words.
Introduce rhyming words, enabling children to listen to word endings and begin to link words that sound similar.
Story structure – Beginning, middle and end of stories (like Little Miss Muffet)
They introduce alliteration, rhyme, onomatopoeia and imagery.
Recognising the rhythm of the rhymes, which helps children work out words when they start reading.

How can you make nursery rhymes more engaging for your child and less repetitive for you?

Sing slowly and clearly
Include actions and expression – this helps your child develop their fine and gross motor skills, making writing easier!
Involve your child – miss words at the end of lines and see if you child can fill in the blanks. When your child is good at this, you could change the word and see if your child can come up with a fitting rhyming word.
Encourage your child to find things in the environment to help them
Get your child to act out the nursery rhymes. This helps children develop their imagination and creativity and link actions to words.
Sing a broader range of nursery rhymes!

If you’re anything like me, the same few get stuck in your head and you can’t for the life of you think of any others. That’s why I’ve put together a list of nursery rhymes that can be found here – Nursery rhyme master list – that includes audios for you to listen to (great if you particularly hate singing!).

If you want to find out more about how to help your little one develop reading skills before they start school, you can download my free activities here – 10 reading activities before ABC – and sign up to my mailing list to get my weekly newsletter that includes additional tips and tricks to help with reading!