Here’s a Quick Way to Work on Essential Reading Skills

As a parent we often wonder if we are doing enough in an area.  I am no exception. When my five year old struggled in homeschool kindergarten, I didn’t understand the problem.  That five year old is now a middle schooler and after a lot of trial and error (including a few years in public school) we know he is dyslexic. Even though the thinking part of me knows that dyslexia can’t be avoided, I wonder if I did enough to support his different thinking brain to develop the best that he could in areas that are different.  There is no way of knowing and I try not to live in regret, but I do want to do things differently with my current toddler.  We are spending a lot of time on visual discrimination skills. This post was updated in October 2016.

Skills like visual discrimination are easy to reinforce at home. 

Visual Discrimination is the ability to tell objects (including written language) apart.  This is a lay person’s definition because I am a lay person.  Now that I have a kiddo in college, middle, elementary and a toddler I can see the importance of developing visual discrimination.  This is the foundational piece of letter recognition, number recognition, name recognition, more advanced math, and reading.

In the past, I was completely against worksheets and I am going to eat some of my words now.  Worksheets do have some value.  This is especially true as I see things like pencil grasp and scissor skills be challenging for my 4^th and 6^th grade kids.  I think that I was so determined to make the work meaningful and have a purpose that I forgot that sometimes the purpose is the work.  The work (including some worksheets) is developing foundational skills: examples include visual discrimination, fine motor, & following directions. 

Examples of our Toddler and Preschool activities.

For visual discrimination, I am doing some of the things that I did with the boys.  We did lots of categorizing and some Montessori 3-part cards.  We did things like the alpha matching that you see below.  I will be doing those things, but also creating more opportunities to flex our muscles.  I grossly underestimated how much repetition was necessary for developing skills like visual discrimination.  Luckily, the other kids were in an excellent preschool program and I know more now!

This year she will be 2/3 and I am not pushing.  We are working on academic skills like counting, number recognition, colors, shapes, animals, recognizing her name, and nursery rhymes.   Developmental skills we are working on include crossing the midline (that is a whole blog post to itself),  fine motor work like: clothespins, scissors, paint brushes, and tongs, gross motor work like: jumping, running, climbing (yes sometimes up the slide) and crawling, vestibular exercises: swinging, spinning, standing on a single foot, sitting on a counter, playing on a balance board, social skills: cooperative play, following 1-2 step directions, sharing, self-care: potty training, self-feeding, brushing teeth, washing hands, getting dressed,  speech & language: talk, talk, talk and read, read, read.   That is a lot.

I think we can focus too much on academics in these early years and it only to their detriment.  It is all about balance.  My tot loves counting and colors and so we are easing into those more and more.  She also loves her thumb and Disney Jr. so we try to keep a balance.

Alpha Matching and Hide and Seek.

When my fourth grader was younger I created an alpha matching sheet to work on fluency.  Since I didn’t spend enough time on fluency activities with my bigger little guy, I am trying to incorporate more fluency type activities (how quickly letters, sounds, and words are recognized) into our routine.  I did the first batch of the High Frequency Phonics cards and dug out the alphabet magnets.  I got this idea from The Snail’s Trail.  Love that blog – wish she was still writing.  I outlined the letters of the alphabet.  It looks like this….

I adapted this to each kiddos age and ability. For my four year old, I gave him the bag of letters and let him go to town.  After he put all the letters on, he sang the alphabet song.  He took all the letters off and did it again. For my bigger little guy, I made it a little more challenging.  He had to close his eyes and try to figure out what letter he had in his hand with his eyes closed.  He had to try to match what he was feeling in his hand to a mental image.  We made this a game that I played with him…. and LOST!

Visual discrimination is such an important skill in so many areas that this is a great activity to help your little learner blossom.  If you are looking for more activities to work with your kids, I have a FREE ebook available full of Halloween Themed Activities.

Have fun!
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