New Here with LOTS of questions

First,
Don’t worry, relax. Your apprehension will transfer to him. Remeber, learning at his age should be FUN!
The key is repetition: lots and lots of practice with the letters, in many different ways. Hands on activities are the best. Have him draw the letters in salt on a tray, sand in a sand box/bucket, a bowl of rice, pudding (he can eat it while he learns!). Have him paint the letters, sing the letters, feel the letters that you make out of string glued onto paper. If you go to an educational store, they usually have lots of reading readiness activities books. If you purchase one, they will have lots of great ideas of what thing matches the sound for that letter.
They usually have teachers working there that could help you pick out good books or materials to help your son. Good Luck! and Have Fun! He is not the only one who doesn’t pick it up on the first try. Most children do not! Remember, they will also teach letters and sounds in kindergarten. You may just want to start with the letters in his first name. The whole alphabet is a lot to learn. Work on only a few letters at a time.

Does your son know his colors? And more importantly his shapes? Does he recognize a square and can he tell you its name? A circle, a triangle, etc.

Those recognition and naming tasks should precede the instruction of the alphabet so that if he doesn’t, I’d back up and teach those. If he does, that’s the good news because that we call a square and square is almost as arbitrary as calling an X an X.

Can he sing the alphabet? We teach the A,B,C song before we teach the letters so that they have the sounds of the letters down pat when we introduce the shapes of the letters. If he can’t sing the A,B,C, song comfortably, I’d also back up and teach him that.

When I was taught the alphabet many years ago, the teacher did have a real description for every letter. A was a tent with the flap pulled down just far enough so the man inside couldn’t get wet but could still see out. B was a stick with two balloons. C was a circle that someone got mad at and kicked a hole in it. I’m sorry I can’t remember them all but an old, old textbook on teaching might have them in or maybe she made them up herself.

As incredible as this will sound now, I didn’t learn the alphabet until I was in 1st grade! In that day, few children went to “nursery school” or even to kindergarten. 1st grade was the place where those skills were taught. If Austin isn’t quite ready to learn his alphabet now, he might be soon. In the meantime, get some alphabet teaching tapes from a preschool teacher’s catalogue or have Austin watch some Sesame Street to help him with the task.

Good luck.

Have you tried Reading Reflex? The book is around $16, and should be of great help.

Also, you may want to take him to an audiologist who specializes in CAPD and have him evaluated. If he has the decoding subtype of CAPD, a program such as FastForWord could greatly improve his ability to remember sound/symbol correlations. The CAPD eval is usually covered by medical insurance, but you have to be sure to find the right kind of audiologist. http://pages.cthome.net/cbristol/ has a lot of information, including a search engine to find CAPD audiologists in your area.

The secret to teaching this kind of child is to find what he needs. Many of the “traditional” methods do not work, but often a “non-traditional” approach works wonders.

Mary

Typical, look into Zoo Phonics. He will probably learn the letter sounds this way.

I would get an auditory processing test done from an SLP, a visual processing test done (we got one done by an OT in the same center as the SLP), the OT also did a motor test. You also want a phonological processing test done.

The tests will show you his strengths and weaknesses. You can then concentrate on the weaknesses.

My dd was one of those kids with expressive language deficits and she had a terrible time learning names of letters, sounds and even names of numbers. She couldn’t rhyme and had problems listening to stories - and could not re-tell a story or sing a song. We did back-tracing, sand tracing and any kind of multi-sensory method out there to no avail.

The auditory processing test (the other tests showed her strenghts) showed discrimination problems and auditory memory problems (she basically had no short term memory or long-term memory- at 5.5 she had memory like a 3yr old).

We did alot of cognitive memory work with her as well as sound therapy/auditory tonal training, and auditory processing work. She worked VERY hard everynight for a number of months - but we saw immediate improvements - within one month she went from not knowing any of her letter sounds to knowing all the sounds of the alphabet, putting them together and reading. I’m convinced it was the memory work we did.

I learned alot about how to teach her from NACD (National Academy of Child Development - www.nacd.org). Many of their clients are what they call level2 kids - ones with physical neurological disorders, autism, down syndrom etc. NACD will put you on a home program that is both neurological and academic. Within 3mo. she went from bottom of her class to top of her class. She still has some issues and we haven’t been doing program for about 6mo. now - we just got too burned out - it’s hard to do. But we are proud of what she has accomplished. She had the same teacher for pre-K and K and her teacher just could not believe she was the same kid.

NACD has a very interesting website. Dr. Doman is eclectic and not afraid to deviate from the orthodox to help children. I found his site fascinating. But, then, I always have leaned toward alternative healthcare and so forth, myself.

I think that’s why I was drawn to their program. I was looking for the answer to WHY my dd was having troubles. If I knew the reason, I felt I could address the problem - NACD seemed to know how to do both. I felt the ‘traditional’ programs out there never really looked at each individual child -but were more one size fits all (some kids it works with and some don’t) and the whole compensatory thing. I have more of a wholistic mentality - I’m a believer in treating the cause vs. the symptoms.

Right or wrong - NACD always had an answer or reason for every little aspect as to why my dd did the things she did. This was the only organization from which I received that kind of support. It was a pivitol point for us - with me being the parent teacher for so long. They taught me alot - from behavior management, to how to make learning fun - with the right intensity, duration, frequency. I’m not in full agreement with everything they do - but as a parent, I can pick out what I think is right for my child(and I know what worked for my child) and apply much of their philosophy to other programs we have done.

I spent alot of money in the process, but overall it was worth it. We never did complete her full ‘development’ goals(which is why she still has some issues left) - but I felt she is functioning well enough that it was worth taking a break from doing program. I figure we can always pick it back up, if we need it.

Why don’t you find the book Reading Reflex by Carmen McGuiness. It teaches the Phonographix method of reading (www.readamerica.net).

In Phonographix you don’t bother teaching children the letter names. You teach them the sounds and show them which letters represent which sounds. You eventually teach them the overlap [the k sound in cat can be represented by a “c” or by a “k.” ; the oo sound might be written as ou (soup) or oo (zoo), etc.

Of course kids will learn the names of letters too, but at the early stages of reading they are pretty irrelevant and often confusing. It’s better to focus on sound-symbol correlation.