Reading phonics

While I was busy with my 7 month old, I gave my 3.5 year old active young girl, DD a big chart paper and pencils, primarily to keep her quiet while I attended to the needs of the baby. DD as I had rightly guessed got engrossed in creating her masterpiece. After a while when I happened to see her finished work lying unnoticed on the table, I was partly surprised and also happy to see the improvement in her drawing. Her earlier drawings used to be focussed on a the face. Now, her drawings are beginning to include hands and legs and look more like a 'homo sapien'. It goes on to show the development in her observation skills.

Here is what she made. I appreciated her drawing and asked her whom she had made and she said the drawing was of her friend 'Titli'. Titli was a friend from India who had come to stay in Malaysia for a short while (returned to India now) and both had become quite pally with one another. No doubt she misses her dear friend while Mummy misses chatting with her mummy too.


To appreciate her effort I put it up on her room door and was watching it when an idea struck me. I brought out my set of empty stickers, called DD. I kept pointing at each and every element in her drawing and together we spelled out the name of the parts and wrote them letter by letter and stuck them to the chart paper. It was something very involving and fun for DD while she brushed up on her phonic skills....unknowingly.

Your child has a lot of potential

Discover it. There was a 'Mommy and Me Weekend' held at Bangsar Village a while back where my daughter's School Principal requested me to take her to show her development on her 'Reading abilities'. Frankly, I was quite sceptical whether she would be able to say or read anything on the stage but her Principal sounded quite confident about her.
It teaches not to underestimate the potential of kids. Also, it fills my heart with love and pride. Her Principal was so happy that she took her to a cartoonist who immediately sketched out her caricature and also another girl who made a painting on her hand. My daughter was overjoyed.

I Can Read Now

Flipping books has always been a fun pastime for DD. I am glad that she loves books as much as we do.

I have shared earlier on the types of books we've got for her in the past. She has seen loads of books on various categories in her two years of life, from soft cloth books to hardbound books to real books (with thin pages). She loves watching the pictures and listening to stories.

I show her flashcards and read aloud books to her and try to make it fun whenever we are with books. She often picks up a book and comes up to me wanting to know what is going on in the book. :)

Here's an update on her development. She has started reading a full sentence. She surprised me all of a sudden by reading the sentence, "N is for Nest" in one of her books about a week ago.

Here is a video of her reading@25 months from her playschool book. Thanks to the teacher too who made this possible. I am quite excited although this is just the beginning.



For parents who might want to know the secret behind teaching your toddler reading: It is important to look at the foundation before you start building an apartment. So, don't be too pushy or force your toddler to 'read'. It will come automatically.

Let the child enjoy the process of loving books first. It is better not to have high expectations as it will lead to a build up of stress in your mind that the child could easily decipher. If you pressurize your child to read, he will lose interest in the activity altogether. So, take it slow but keep on trying.

For parents who already know the secret to teaching your toddler to read, please do share your tips and learnings.

The Love for Reading and the Joy of having Books

Both Mom and Dad have always been book lovers since childhood. Mum hardly gets time for reading nowadays. Inculcating the reading habit has come naturally to DD. She has seen us buying books, reading books, taking care of books, stacking books, discussing books and also sometimes debating over topics from books and arguing about 'buying more than needed' books.

Recently, we bought a bookcase to be able to handle the overwhelming love for books. Tip: Children learn by imitation. So, pick up your books now.

Since she was a baby, DD loved books. She can literally say when she grows up that that she could EAT, SLEEP and READ books. She had started with nibbling cloth books and then graduated to nibbling small board books, to 'touch and feel' books, puppet books, pop out books, flashcard pop out books, sliding ABC and 123 books. Its amazing to see the wonderful variety of books written for children today. Tip: Children who are spoken to and read to frequently have larger vocabularies and develop into better readers.

Recollecting an incident when she was just 7 months old. We had attended a preview at Shichida and decided to enrol her. We came home with the brochure and a small story book.

I put DD to sleep and sat reading the book beside her only to be woken by a nudge and find a half eaten book with all the sides and corners gone.

I was astonished, and partly scared that she would fall ill. That was her first interaction with a real BOOK. Fortunately, DD loves reading books as much as we love reading books to her. So, it is money well spent and quite satisfying to see her enjoy books.

She has her own little library of books. It is at her height so that she can easily reach out for them whenever she needs them and put them back too when reading is over. There was a time when she would just take out the books and stack them on the floor or on the bed not bothering about what is inside.

Daddy would wonder why she did that. Mummy would explain that its her developmental milestone at that point of time. They love stacking. That seems a long time back.

Tip: To inculcate the habit of reading, first of all, let the books be easily accessible to your child.

Today, I replaced many of her hard bound board books with a fresh set of thinner paper books. She has learnt to handle paper books. (Again, reiterates the fact in Mummy's mind that our little baby is growing up.)

Now, she loves flipping the paper of the book and looking at the pictures and pointing out the letters to us. Tip: If you are well versed with her reading developmental stage, you need to keep upgrading it with time and her level of progression.

We read to her whenever she is in the mood, (which she is most of the time - I am sure it'll be quite the opposite when she starts with serious academic books :D ) She brings her books to me or at times prefers to read alone. She loves listening to the stories and then repeating the story again by flipping the pages. Tip: Story time is more of a spontaneous activity at our home rather than a fixed time in the night.

A few months back, she used to love reading the story of Goldilocks, Papa Bear, Mumma Bear and 'Baby' Bear over and over again. Now, she has graduated to many more new stories like the Greedy Dog, The Lion and the Mouse, Cinderella, and some newer story books. Tip: If your toddler wants to hear the same story over and over again, let them enjoy the comfort of the same story while you build their vocabulary by adding in new words or pointing at the written words while saying the story.
I would like to specially mention here

Dr. Seuss' Books

They are an amazing collection that every beginning reader should have. These books are graded on the reading level of the child. So, the parents can buy accordingly. She just loves to see what PAT is doing in one of Dr. Seuss' books. PAT sitting on CAT or PAT sitting on the HAT, PAT sitting on BAT, ALL are SMALL, while ALL are TALL. ALL dancing on the WALL. ALL FALL. She also loves Ladybird's Peter and Jane collection too. She will open the book and point at Peter and Jane and fish and tree and also the written words but she doesn't know to read yet.

Toddlers enjoy a variety of books now. Some are based on rhyme and rhythm. Some have interactive stories with refrains, sound effects, or sounds to imitate or enact: Eric Carle's 'From Head to Toe'. Some are based on Cars, Trains and other moving objects: 'Chugga, Chugga Choo Choo' by Kevin Lewis. Some are based on familiar things and situations: 'Bebé Goes Shopping' by Susan Middleton Elya. Some books help with toddler fears and feelings: 1) 'No, David!' by David Shannon, 2) 'Llama Llama Mad at Mama' by Anna Dewdney. There are books that teach your child to follow certain rules and virtues. Then, there are lift the flap books like 'Dear Zoo' by Rod Campbell and sing-along books like 'If You're Happy and You Know It' by Jane Cabrera or Nursery Rhyme books like 'Five Little Monkeys Sitting in a Tree' by Eileen Christelow besides other conceptual books on counting, opposites, colours, alphabets and fun concepts.

Another important to discuss here is 'attention span'. A typical toddler has very very less attention span. So, they will read a book for a few seconds or a few minutes and then close the book and again come back to it after a while. Tip: Do not fret if your child does that too. It is quite normal. Slowly their attention span will increase.

She also enjoys 'quiet reading times' at home just as she has at her school. She will sit with her book in her lap, open it and say, "One Day".....as if telling me a story. The first picture will be the subject of her story. Say, Teddy Bear....Then she will get engrossed in the pictures and keep flipping and uttering the words"And then" ..'teddy bear'.....'dog'...."And then"....."And then".....till "I finished reading the book" comes. I would like to quote James Bryce here, 'The worth of a book is to be measured by what you can carry away from it'.

Nowadays, DD has started to discuss what she is reading with me, another developmental milestone in reading. It is said, "TV. If kids are entertained by two letters, imagine the fun they'll have with twenty-six. Open your child's imagination. Open a book.

Do your children love reading books? How often do you buy books? What books would you recommend for a 2 - 2.5 year old?