Reading & Other Learning Disabilities

From Reading and Other Learning Disabilities

A Blog by Dr. Gary G. Brannigan & Dr. Howard Margolis

How to Reach Your Young Child Through 4 Sense Keys

A Guest Post by Nancy Cloyd

President, Literacy for Tykes

http://LiteracyForTykes.blogspot.com

Who is your child?  You can know your child better than anyone else.  You have a special place in his heart. He wants your attention.  Can you reach him?

There are Sense Keys you can use to open up his response: Sight, Sound, Touch, and Doing. After his basic needs of food and rest are met, He discovers everything through these senses.

Let’s think about those basic needs first. Does he get 10 hours of rest?  Does he eat simple healthy foods?  Does he have known food allergies?  Do you limit his sugar intake?  Do you give him water—instead of juice or sodas—to drink regularly?

After his hunger and tiredness have been satisfied, let’s look at his other senses. Have you had his eyesight checked? Does he need glasses, or eye exercises to strengthen his eye muscles?  Does he need visual helps to focus on one part of a page at a time?

How about his hearing? Have you had his hearing level checked? Can he hear you when you speak to him from close by, and from across the room?  Does he have an ear blockage that his doctor might help?  Can he hear his teacher at school?

You want to know these things about your child because he learns about his world through his sight and hearing.  Once you know these senses are okay, or how to help him with challenges to his sight and hearing, then you can look at how you are reaching him through theses senses.

To see if you like them, most children look at your facial expressions. They also look to see if you are smiling when you ask them to read with you.  They listen to your tone of voice to find out if reading with you will be fun, or not.  Are you smiling and using a pleasant sound in your voice when you invite him to read with you? (By the way, have you turned off the TV, music and cell phones in the room before you invite him to read with you?)

Sense of touch is an important key to open up your child’s ability to pay attention.  Most children want to feel you hug them and want to sit either on your lap or cuddled up close with them when you read together.  This touch really helps them focus on what you are showing them in the book.

Sense of doing is a way to help your child keep his focus on what you are showing them.  Make a game out of it. You can use the “Find, Point, Say” game with beginning sounds of words:  Start by saying “Let’s find all the words on this page that start with ‘B’, the ‘bah’ sound”.  Then you help him find every word beginning with “B,” point to it, and say together the word like “bear,” stressing the sound of “B.” Go through the page finding each “B” word. If  he’s still attending, go on to the “Hard C,” looking for words like “Cat”; then to “D,” for words like “dog,” and so on.  You can use this “Find, Point and Say” Game with any reading sound on which he needs to work.

With any luck, the book you using has words and picture that illustrates them.  Point and help your child point to any words and then to the part of the picture it describes.  If a color name is written, first Find, Point, Say the color name in print, then Find, Point, Say that color on the picture.  If an animal is name is written,  Find, Point, Say the animal’s name in print, then Find, Point, Say the animal in the picture.

These “doing” actions are a good way to bring meaning to the words and fun to reading. By engaging your child in fun activities like these for 20 minutes a day, you can help him find joy in an area that may have frustrated him.

By the way, children learn what they see you do.  Does your child frequently see you read a book?  Can you read from a book, even for a few minutes, so he sees that reading books is something you really do?  Do you get books from the library for yourself and children’s books for him  Do you let him choose subjects that are interesting to him? Do you guide him to books that are easy enough for him to read?

Your caring use of these Four Sense Keys: Sight, Sound, Touch, and Doing can reach your child.  Your love, shared with him through reading, can open him up to the fun offered by books and reading.

© Nancy Cloyd

Literacy for Tykes. Literacy for Tykes, a 501 C3 Public Charity that equips, encourages, and empowers parents to bring literacy to their early child’s development. It raises funds to provide the high quality book Teddy Bear’s Favorite Pictures with step-by-step parent guidelines to share learning points with their children.  It emphasizes “Quiet Together Time” home reading of parent and child. It distributes books and complimentary materials through human service and educational groups, such as Infant & Toddler Connection, Healthy Families, Early Child Special Education, and Headstart.  You can find more information about Literacy for Tykes at http://LiteracyForTykes.blogspot.com.

Edited by Howard Margolis, Ed.D.,  www.reading2008.com