What are your best ideas to teach an extra wiggly child how to read?

[Pster]

My middle dd (almost 6) is EXTREMELY wiggly.

She is learning to read - she's been struggling a little but is making progress. What phonics games with easy words have you used to work with your young dc?

Active games & anything she can manipulate seems to work best.

I tried having her read words & sentences (copied from OPGTR) on a large white board the other day and that seemed to help. She was able to sit / lay on the floor in front of the board and squiggle to her heart's content for this lesson. I tried having her write on the board too - but she struggles with handwriting so I want to keep that frustration out of this lesson.

She didn't like using the magnetic OPGTR tiles cause she thought they were "babyish". (Her sister, 4.5, is using them too so - she is having trouble with wanting to be the BIG sister who should "know" more. iykwim)

any ideas?

thanks!

[oakmom]

It's more expensive now than when I bought it and it took my many hours to cut apart all the cardstock game components, but my son and I enjoyed playing the games together.

[Laurel]

Something simple that worked for us the other day: I was reviewing CVC words with my 4.5 year old. I wrote out a bunch of them on index cards and laid them out on the floor. I had her pick out the words she wanted to read, pick them up, give them to me, and read them. It added a bit of movement, and the chance to sit on the floor. (For her, it was great because she could pick out the words she knew, which helped with her confidence as well, as she's a bit of a perfectionist.) Since sitting on the floor worked so well, the next day when we read some sentence strips, we sat on the floor.

Another way to add some movement would be to put cards with words taped up around the room, and have her run to each word and then read it.

[kalanamak]

sit and sound out words. He does MUCH better with a pencil in hand (with a nice pink rubbery guide) looking at a picture and rather spittily working his way through /p/ /i/ /g/ and writing it letter by letter. He puts curlicues on some letters, writes one very very small ("look, the littlest i in the world!),
makes the sound of the picture loudly while printing, and wiggles the whole durn time.

Did I sense this 2 whole years ago when I decided on SWR?

[Tonia]

I have a ton of games linked from my blog - I have a wiggly girl too. No time to link them each individually but if you click on my blog link below and look on the right side under "Documents" there are games for short vowel CVC words and then games for any stage of reading. We play a lot of games here!

HTH!

[Pster]

these are great! thanks - printing them off now!!

[Pster]

you know this made me remember something about writing words on post-it notes and attaching them on a window - and then as she reads the words correctly she can move the word to the next window -

this works out well because in our loft / school area we have a row of windows!!

so thanks for mentioning this!! I'll go write some words on stickies!!

[mtnparent]

Shaving cream on table tops or shower walls is fun to use as a writing surface.

[StephanieZ]

We play informal charades with home-made reading words. You pick a card, act it out, the other players guess. Then you show them the word card and they read it to find out if they are right or not. (So both/all players read each word!) No points, no winners or losers and can have as many players as you wish (sibs can help! My older sibs always wanted to play also when we got the game out for the youngest. Even younger sibs/pre-readers would play with the learning reader helping them read their word cards!)

I made the cards on the computer but you could just handwrite on index cards if you don't want to mess with the cards. I start with words at the current level and add more as they progress. Each of my dc has loved this and it helped a lot at those early stages when a less (in 100EZL) would include maybe reading 10-20 words. Adding in charades could easily add reading 30-50 words in 20 min or so.

To get you started, good words are mostly verbs and can include words like . .

sit
bit
hit
kiss
run
rub
hug
pat
jig (OK not quite a verb but works)
rest
nap
jump
stand


to expand into nouns later I added. . .
be a cat
be a dog
be a bug
be a . . .

Look in your bob books/reading program books for word ideas.

I probably ended up with 100-200 cards and by that point the child had moved past it but for a very wiggly child, it would be easy to extend this game into more complicated reading/sentences/etc.

[Karin]

Explode the Code has helped my wiggly son. Also, I let him wiggle when he's reading as long as it's not too large of wiggly stuff. Cathy Duffy's book has suggestions for wiggle learners, and her website may have some, too (I don't use it much). http://www.cathyduffyreviews.com/

[Pster]

I wrote up some of these for tomorrow - I think by dd's (4 & 5) will have fun playing charades.

Not to mention a lot of the ideas you guys gave me will be perfect for both of them.

thank you!

[Zelda]

For times when you may need her to sit you could try having her sit on an exercise ball. Some kids need a lot of feedback and stimulation when they are sitting and they get that from a ball (there are also some inflatable cushions available that do the same thing). The ball also forces them to work on core strengthening where that might be an issue. Its helped a lot here.

[Pster]

I did try that a couple times.... I asked before about getting her to sit still during lessons.... but I found she bounced too much. Maybe I could have her sit on it during other lessons where we don't have to be at the table. When I tried it it didnt' work but now.... since I'm trying to get away from just table lessons with her.... it might be a good idea to try again. ty for reminding me!