Reading and Writing Access

Could your child enjoy reading?

Children use speaking to get what they want. To start to control their world.

Can we do the same with reading? Start with a small vocabulary of key words. Perhaps you’ll find magnets with key words. Or buy flash cards with key words and add magnetic strips on their backs so you can stick them on the fridge.

Add cards with pictures of people in the family or things that matter to your child.

Organise them on the fridge to make sentences, jokes, instructions. Get silly. Have fun.

Make it active: If your child puts “Mummy jump”, Jump! Give them a feeling of power and control. When they put it into words on the fridge do it if you possibly can.

Gradually extend the vocabulary to a second set of key words and to include words the child asks for. But do not add any words until those from the first set are pretty familiar, and then consider adding two a day.

This post was inspired by Breakthrough to Literacy and Ladybird Reading Scheme. Thank you to both.

Have fun.

When your children write, are the letters untidy? Backwards, sideways, upside down?

Sometimes getting the whole body involved can help.

First write it on paper, or on a salt tray… three times with your eyes open and three times with your eyes closed. Now go LARGE.

One way to do it is to get a bucket of water and a big house painting brush (about 2 inches wide) and make the letter on the outside wall as big as you can, reaching up as tall as possible, going down, down, all the way to the ground.

Take turns. You can also use a very large paper. Or write in sand, or with chalk on a large surface. Just make a point of making the letter HUGE. After you’ve written a very large letter, write it small again, on paper or in a sand tray. And then write it big again. And small again.

Don’t overdo it. A couple of times, less than 5 minutes and then let them play. Painting with water on the wall can be fun.

If the writing is better with eyes closed you might want to find out why the eyes are getting in the way. Consider talking to us.

Important: If you’re working with your child on English, focus on lower case letters. When reading a book, your child sees mostly lower case letters. Start there.

Is your child’s drawing all over the place?

Perhaps it’s hard to control the pencil. Coloring within the lines isn’t quite happening. Rather than doing it again and again for practice, let’s step back.

Here’s an activity that has much of the same components, but is child focused and can be fun and less frustrating.

Get a car playmat (or make one, if this is something you’d like to do). Sit with your child to play. Travel on the roads with the cars and trucks. Don’t like trucks? Take the toy animals on an expedition!

Talk about staying on the road. Talk about the things they might see. Be careful not to take over. Try to follow their lead.

You can do the same with a wooden train set that has grooves: those guide your child to stay on the track.

How might this help? It works on hand-eye coordination, on following the lines, and can provide practice for crossing midline. The general idea is to always start where your child is and work from there to where you want your child to be.

Sitting and playing with your child provides you an opportunity to talk about what it is that they are doing – even a running commentary about right and left and around and stop and go, faster and slower. All this supports language. Don’t underestimate the old toys of the past.

Dyspraxic children (and quite a few others) tend to have poor dexterity.

Their grip may be too tight or too slack, or maybe the fingers don’t work separately as well as you’d like them.

Perhaps they hold things in a fist rather than a delicate pincer grip. Maybe holding pencils is more of a challenge than you’d like it to be.

One of our favorite ways to encourage the development of manual skills through play is with cornstarch dough. Important note: In the US cornflour is distinctly different from cornstarch. However, in the UK it seems cornstarch is called cornflour.

You will need:

Show your child how to mix the cornstarch and water to make a thick cream… like batter or yoghurt.

Cornstarch dough is good for getting you some peace and quiet. Try it when you want a child who’s busy-busy-busy to just stop for a minute.

It captivates their attention. It’s fun doing it with a friend and good for developing parallel play. Adding some toy animals promotes cooperative play and language development.

If you possibly can, do it outdoors. It can be messy. However, if you wait long enough it’ll dry out and then you can just sweep it or vacuum it.

Writing is about communication, and neat writing is about pride and a desire to excel.

Ask them to write the label for their work on a small, individual white board, slate or chalk board (something easily erasable).

Then gently and supportively correct any errors. Once that’s done, give them a large label (such as construction paper) to copy onto. The more attractive the label the better. Put their final copy up with their work to display.

Take a picture of the whole display including the label. Save the image electronically so that your child can look back at their work and feel that it is valued. This makes it easier to dismantle the display when they make something new. It also means it can be emailed to family members to increase the child’s sense of achievement.

As they get more proficient, ask them to say what it is and who made it. They can then start adding a bit more about it.

Key points: