Lydia is starting to ask things like "what is that letter?" and "what does that letter say?". I'm not of the mindset that thinks kids should be held off from reading until they are 6 or 7, but I also don't think it should be forced upon them. My theory is: if she's interested, go with it. But this does seem awfully early.

What should I do at this point? Just concentrate on letter recognition? Introduce a new letter every week? And how do you introduce the letters; with upper or lower case? Or both at the same time? That seems confusing.

Anyone have any experiences they want to share?

Well, you know my answer. ;)

I think you should just keep reading to her and answer all her questions, all the while keeping it low-key and fun.

You can buy wooden magnetic fridge letters in upper and lowercase. We had a set of each, and Sam enjoyed matching up the "mommy M" and the "baby M", etc. That is how he learned upper/lower case letters. Once it seemed like he was ready, I bought a sheet of magnetic 'paper' that can easily be written on and cut. Using a sharpie, I wrote common and fun words for him and cut them out - more fridge magnets. I think some of the words we used were park, toys, truck, car, Sam, Mommy, Daddy, etc. I used all uppercase for those but I don't think it matters too much.

You know that I live in the city, so there are words everywhere - that helped a lot, too - wherever we went, I would point out what the signs said. Well, most of the time. :rolleyes:

I have heard of people putting little labels around the house saying what the item is; like "chair" "table" "piano" "bed" etc.

HTH a little. Sam was reading competently at 2.5 so I know it is possible - I believe that every child hits that point at a different time. The way you describe Lydia, she is very interested in words and will probably continue to pick it up quickly. Have a fun time!

Tara

Eli has taken phases with reading...going from very, very interested around Lydia's age to not really caring nearer to three. Now, at 4.5, he is reading many things, but we are not actively teaching him.
We are just following his interests and trusting that some time, before he's 37, he'll pick it up on his own.

Jennifer.

Nope, not insase at all, IMO!

I learned to read early, by my third birthday, I could read most of a restaurant menu. And Kaya is already showing signs of wanting to read.

She knows about half of the letters by sight, maybe more now that I think about it. And she knows a lot of the letter sounds as well. She *loves* the Dr. Seuss ABC book (Big A, little a, A a A), which is the book I learned to read with. And we found a few neat letter books at the Salvation Army that we look at every day. They have simple pages, showing something like A a and a picture of an apple on each page.

When we're out and about, she'll point out letters that we see on signs and so on. I just follow her lead, and answer he when she asks.

She also really wants to learn to write her name, so I write it for her in yellow marker, and she can trace over it.

So, to answer your question, no it's not insane to help her explore letters. The whole key is to follow their lead, and not force anything (which I know you wouldn't anyway).

(ours are plastic ;) )

Beni loves to write his name with them and learned most of his letters from them.
They are great since they can be held and fingered for tactile knowledge and grouped by lines or curves or tails and so on.

I also am a big fan of BabyBug books for even over 2 year olds (lots of rhymes and cute short tales)

Read, read, read and point to the words as you do.

It will happen in her own sweet time (whether sooner or later!)

I'm having this delima with my almost 22 month old. He's picking up words, letters and numbers left and right and seems hungry for more. At first I though he was recognizing words because of where they are, but he recognizes them in new places (ie, a book we've never read, on TV, computer, ect...). He likes to point out things/words/letters/numbers when he recognizes them. I try to respond positively like "Yes, that is the letter C!"

He never wanted to be read to before and in the past week, that's all he wants (even though I've had laryngitis, probably from reading so much, lol!). Most people I know with kids my son's age are forcing the alphabet on their kids and I don't want to do that. Since he's still young, I'm just going to go with his flow and let him learn without pushing. We have magnetic letters somewhere, but who knows where they've ended up. I've printed and cut some out on heavy paper for him to play with.

Carla V.

My daughter was the same way, fascinated with letters at a very young age. We wanted to encourage this. We have used a few phonetics programs (her favourite is Explode the Code) and some computer software that she enjoys and just read to her lots. Now at 4.5 years she reads very well.

I'll make this as simple as I can. It's never to early to start learning about language. I spent 6 years as a private phonics/reading tutor for children from 3yr - high school. My youngest student was reading & understanding well at 3.5, so it does happen.

My "bible" is a book called Words their way. I have actually seen it at a better stocked Boarders. I love this book because it has the assesments to determine the level that the child is at. Mind you these are not "sit at your desk and write" tests. They are more like games and things you can do with the child to see what they know, where they are in the development of their reading/literacy. Then the book is sectioned into developmental stages (not age based) with games and craft activities etc to play and help the child strengthen the skill they have and build new ones in a logical, consistant growth pattern. This book deals with everything from scribbling on the page to "$1,000" words that high school kids need to know for the SAT. On top of all this information, it includes the templates for making the games in the book yourself! The stuff in this book is so much fun, I never had one kids complain about the games (& I had some big complainers!)

Ok, so naturally I'm completely prepaired for a child to learn in the traditional , identify letters, learn the sounds, read words pattern and thats not the way my DD is learning. She's learning to write the letters first, then identify them, then finding their sounds. Aren't kids great!

Chole