1. How to pronounce  numbers in Dutch

 Een, twee, drie, vier

 Een, twee, drie, vier

  ^{ay        ay     ea f ea}

2. Encouraging a Love of Reading and Words – A dozen ideas!

Long before your little one reads, and after your child is reading, you can create with your child a love of our English language, books and reading. How?

1. Basics: vision, hearing, speech
1. Vision: Is he squinting? Can she copy what she sees?
2. Hearing: phonemes – can identify? Speech (use 20+ words by 20 months)

2. Loving, accepting atmosphere: starting with speech, for example – “me going, her going” (it’s developmental, no need to correct; just model correct speech)

3. Set positive expectations: “We’re going to have fun today!”

4. Have a consistent framework for lessons (time of day, location, general format of lesson). This leaves your child most open to new content, learning ideas.

5. Accept mistakes (yours and child’s).  Ask: What can I learn from this? How can I avoid it again? – And then move on!
1. Example of perfectionist mom: stressed to pick perfect reading program for her perfectionist son, age 4. Stressed about how to keep him from being perfectionist
2. Handle frustrations – humor is very helpful! One 5-yr old student would get stuck on a word, and hyperventilate, flapping her arms. I was delighted, and said, “You look like a cute little helicopter trying to take off! Does it help?” The discussion did help. It opened the door to alternative strategies she could use.

6. Read to your child. Have a wide variety of books. Use the library, tag sales. Keep favorites to re-read. Take books with you when you leave the house.

7. Let your child control the experience, choosing the book, flipping pages as she likes: 3 at a time, looking at favorite pages repeatedly. If you need to, take turns controlling the experience, including deciding what book to read. 

8. Point to the words as you read. Ask about words – “What’s that mean?”

9. Ask questions: “What will happen? Is the character nice? How do you know?“

10. Model reading: keep a book by your bed, read bits from magazines, read the Bible. Limit TV, videos, video or pc gaming time (we do 1 movie or 1 hour a day).

11. Build her vocabulary/Play with words
1. Make up words (cat = purr pet). Play with rhyming sounds.
2. Use big words! Give clues in context, or ask if she knows what that means.

12. Play games with phonic cards, especially those with pictures. Why?
1. Children associate games with fun – automatic positive expectation, and they want to keep doing it! They may not even realize they’re learning!
2. Our minds work in pictures, so learning the symbol (letter) and its sound is much easier if the child associates them with a picture. (e = /e/ as in egg)

English! Gotta love it!

With only one exception, every letter in the English alphabet is at times, either silent, has no sound of its own, and/or has more than one sound in words that are common to the English language. See what we mean:

 A = apart, late

B = lamb

C = success

D = bridge, liked

E = eye, be, pet

F = of

G = sign, gigantic

H = when

I  = icicle

J  = jicama

K = know

L = tortilla

M = mnemonic

N = hymn, solemn

O = one, go, hot

P = phonics, pneumonia

Q = quiz, Iraq, quinoa

R = Worcester, Worcestershire,reservoir

S = his, sis, island

T = listen, catch

U = business, usual

V = *

W = who

X = xylophone

Y = city, why, myth

Z = scherzo, Szechwan

3. Fry Readability Graph to Assess Text Reading Level

Edward Fry, formerly of the Rutgers University Reading Center, created one of the most widely used, and easy-to-use readability graphs for educators. Reproduced with permission from Fry, Edward. Elementary Reading Instruction. 1977. The McGraw Hill Companies. All rights reserved. Find the Fry  graph at  www.school.discovery.com/schrockguide/fry/fry.html.

You can also check the readability level of a passage using the Klesch-Kincaid Reading Level built into the newer versions of Microsoft® Word. In Word XP, to display readability statistics...

• On the Tools menu, click Options, and click the Spelling & Grammar tab.
• Select the Show readability statistics check box, and then click OK.
• On the Tools menu, click Spelling and Grammar.
• When Microsoft® Word finishes checking spelling and grammar, it displays information about the reading level of the document.

Directions for Use of the Fry Readability Graph

• Randomly select three 100-word passages from a book or an article.
• Plot the average number of syllables and the average number of sentences per 100 words on the graph to determine the grade level of the material.
• Choose more passages per book if great variability is observed and conclude that the book has uneven readability.
• Few books will fall into the solid black area, but when they do, grade level scores are invalid.

Additional Directions for Working Readability Graph

• Randomly select three sample passages and count exactly 100 words beginning with the beginning of a sentence. Don't count numbers. Do count proper nouns.
• Count the number of sentences in the hundred words, estimating length of the fraction of the last sentence to the nearest 1/10th.
• Count the total number of syllables in the 100-word passage. If you don't have a hand counter available, an easy way is to simply put a mark above every syllable over one in each word, then, when you get to the end of the passage, count the number of marks and add 100.
• Enter graph with average sentence length and number of syllables; plot dot where the two lines intersect. Area where dot is plotted will give you the approximate grade level.
• If a great deal of variability is found, putting more sample counts into the average is desirable.