Hi

I hope you won't mind me butting in, I just have a question I thought members of this board might be best placed to answer...

I would like to teach my daughter to read using the Jolly Phonics scheme very soon (after Christmas probably) and would like some advice on how others find the time to do things like this 1:1 at home if you have other young children at home?

My daughter is 4 and I also have a 2 year old who is in the process of dropping any daytime napping, and now naps about 1 day in 3... My daughter goes to bed half an hour after her brother to give her a bit of 1:1 time, but this is her wind down time for stories, board games etc and she is probably too tired by then to want to learn in any structured way.

Just as background on why I want to teach her to read at all, or do it now:

I am British and my DH is German, the children's first language at the moment is English but my DD is fully bi-lingual (son is not yet but understands pretty much everything in German and speaks some). We live in Germany - my daughter (and later my son) will start school when she is very nearly 6, and will (obviously) learn to read and write in German there. This is absolutely fine, but it is important to me that she be "bi-literate" as well as bi-lingual - people (including teachers) tell you that children will "just pick up" reading and writing in their other language, and this is true up to a point, but most of the older children I have met heavily favour their school language and make glaring grammatical mistakes even in spoken mother tongue, and most or all do not write particularly well in their non-school language, as they apply the rules of the school language to writing the other language (this may only apply where the same alphabet is used, but in our case of course it is the same alphabet)... I am sure this will be avoided if I teach my daughter to read and write in English encourage her to love reading and read avidly in English. I read to her lots now of course, but I don't think this is enough long term.

My daughter is interested in learning to read and write (she can recognise most/ all letters and all her 0-9 numbers, and write her name and her brother's, and when she is in the mood asks to write things, mostly people's names, and often I can just spell them to her, sometimes writing some of the letters on request. Up to now I have just gone with her flow, but although bright she is not a child prodigy about to teach herself to read before school age and I want to give her a helping hand with a bit of structured learning). We obviously already do the pre-reading things like spotting letters on road signs etc.

She will start to do some preliminary letter work (which she has already done pretty much by herself in English) next year at Kindergarten, and will learn to read properly at school the year after. I want to teach my daughter to read in English well before she learns in German, as otherwise I think it will be too confusing to start learning both close together, and I will just have to leave it to school...

Sorry for the long post, I wrote that as I anticipate being told just not to teach her and let her "just pick it up" and I wanted to try and explain why I don't want to do that... Not totally sure whether I have managed that, sorry if it's still not clear!

So how do you home eders find time to concentrate on things like learning to read if you have young toddlers about the house? Any tips gratefully received!

Many thanks!

Hilary

Hi,
Although I don't have any young children now, for the first few years of home education we were also fostering toddlers, so I do know the problem!

I don't think there is any perfect solution, but what may work (I do have friends who have home educated large families of children, so they seem to have succeeded) is

a) Capitalize on any sleep time that your younger one does take and use that, especially as you start; if he doesn't sleep, willhe play quietly in his cot for 10 mins?
b) Keep some sort of bag/ basket of special stuff for your younger one to play with at the crucial moments when you do want time with your daughter, and keep reinforcing that it is only for those times. You could consider buying some special DVD's if they would distract your toddler without distracting your daughter ( and don't let him watch them at other times)
c) Buy a cheap timer - and keep explaining to your little on that they need to play quietly until the bell rings ect...plus some reward when they do so? ( All depends on our parenting principles, of course!)
d) Be organised- keep the reading stuff handy and know in advance what you want to do next;then if a peaceful slot comes along whenhe is playing quietly, use that opportunity!

Above all, don't panic! I fully understand why you want to do this, but learning to read is best achieved in small regular bursts anyway, so you will probably do fine if you can find 10 mins a day 5 or so times a week, and that should be possible. If you have terrible sessions occasionally in which your younger one won't leave you alone, then it probably won't matter in the great scale of things.....

Let us know how it goes,

Julie

Hi Julie

Thanks so much for replying - there is a lot of common sense in your reply, which I had somehow been blinded to when I started to think through actually starting with this - he has dropped his naps since I first looked into how to go about teaching her lol!

He isn't in a cot, he has a toddler bed, and now won't stay up there and play as he is fighting the idea of being put up to nap at all - when he still took a daily nap he would get up and play in his room before climbing back into bed sometimes, but now I get a tantrum if I even take him up or mention napping, so he now only naps on the sofa or occasionally if he falls asleep in the car and I carry him up to bed.

Aside from that though your reply has put back into perspective what I need to do - I think DD and I will do our little study sessions at the kitchen table, and he can sit up at the table too with something else to do. My kids are quite sociable with each other (I think maybe this is because my daughter is out at Kindergarten until lunch so they enjoy being together in the afternoons) and tend to play together most of the time, rather than separately, so I will have to think of some Christmas stocking fillers that will keep him occupied at the table for 10 or 15 minutes at a go, and can be kept as you say specifically for these times. I am wondering about play-dough sets, though we may temporarily have to stop doing any play-dough at other times!

The kids already get to watch TV in the day, especially as a wind down for my daughter after she gets home from Kindergarten before we do whatever we are planning for the afternoon, so I am not sure I have kept it as a rare enough treat to induce him to stay in the next room by himself while I spend time with Anna! I will have to think about that one but think the idea of something else for him to do alongside us, reserved only for that time, may work better.

I will get a timer too, and your point about being organised in advanced is a very good one, I must make sure I organise what I want to do the next day the evening before, once the kids are in bed!

DD is very excited about learning to read - we are already reading some of the Phonics Stories and she proudly told DH on the phone tonight that she was "Having a learn to read book" so I am wondering if I should capitalise on the interest and start earlier than planned, although I will have to hold off at least til next week as a friend in a similar position to me with a DD the same age said that she would like to try and do this together somehow (not easy as we live 45 mins drive apart), but she is in the UK now so I need to wait til she gets back and at least discuss what we are going to do with her before I start - she also has a younger child so maybe we can work something out with one babysitter and one "teacher" on the occassions we manage to meet up, but that won't be often enough.

Thanks again for your sensible suggestions, I will get back to you and let you know how we do!

By the way I posted on this board some time ago about teaching my DD a bit of French, as she had asked for this before we went on holiday there (she was concerned about being able to play with children on holiday lol) - I got some good suggestions and we dabbled with a bit of the BBC schools website and First Fun with Frech DVD, and both she and to a lesser extent her little brother picked up and still used several phrases and words, and in Anna's case numbers too - although in the end she made friends with a little Polish boy on holiday and they communicated "by hand and foot" as the Germans say lol so she didn't need the French except in the shop!

Thanks

Hilary