Question in the magazine "Family and School": My granddaughter is four years old, but she already knows all the letters and asks us to taught her to read. Can I do it now or wait until she grows up? At what age should a child be taught to read??

Answered by F. Ippolitov, candidate of pedagogical sciences:

Allow me to start the answer from afar. You probably know that cybernetic devices and cybernetic ideas are all over the place right now. Among these ideas is one that seems to be very simple: the idea of ​​feedback.

Generally speaking, none of our actions is conceivable without feedback. If we hold out our hand for a glass of water, feedback is provided to us by touching it, by feeling this object in the palm of our hand. If we are talking with a friend, his look, facial expressions, remarks constantly show us how he accepts and understands our words. This is also feedback.

Okay, but what about your question?

Today, there are thousands of cases of early education of children in both literacy, and mathematics, and a foreign language. Already at the age of 3 they started it, and at 4. Sometimes - as a pedagogical experiment, and certified teachers and psychologists were engaged in this business, and sometimes dads and mothers without any science (it would seem) achieved that their child at 4 years old read freely on native language. There were cases when such training cost the little man dearly: there were nervous disorders, brain exhaustion, even mental retardation. But these are rare cases, usually everything went well. This is not surprising - the child learns from the first years "playfully" remembers and assimilates a great amount of knowledge.

But there is one limitation. At 3-4 years old, the child is used to getting to know the world around him in a way that is more convenient for him. He puts everything into his mouth, not from hunger, but to feel how a new object feels with his lips. He examines all the things under the table and under the bed, not because he wants to be taken out in the dust: he is interested in what is "on the other side." And when the elders stop his attempts, remember how much grief and sobbing usually happens ... In short, a child at an early age cannot be forced to learn. The well-known school age - 7 years old - is determined not in general by the ability to accept new knowledge (it manifests itself almost together with coherent speech), but by the ability of patience, the ability to do what is needed. Here, of course, another question is how to cultivate this ability; it is also different in children at the age of 7 and depends most of all on the preliminary efforts of the parents.

However, it remains indisputable: all successful attempts at early education are based on the ability to make learning fun for the child. He himself must approach adults and show the new letters he has learned. He himself must remind that today they did not deal with him, and demand this. How to achieve such a position? Clear - to make learning interesting, to support and encourage the slightest step forward. And no coercion, no prodding!

In other words, if you want to know can you teach your child to read- ask the child himself! Just don't ask with words, but with deeds. Take a closer look at what the girl is especially interested in, and try to somehow combine these interests with the intended training. Start showing and telling. Then stop, for a day, two, three. The baby does not remind you herself, does not ask you to go further? .. So, you made a mistake in something - think and try to start differently. Is it the same again? Make a third try. Failure again? .. Well, then you have to wait - either the child is not ready, or you yourself.

Therefore, it's all about feedback: you can try to teach your child anything, at any age, but keep the feedback! Is the child yawning, distracted, trying to get away from you? Here's a sure sign of trouble for you. Immediately stop the case and do not allow yourself to think that the baby is to blame for something, “has not matured”, “it is necessary to teach him”. No, it's you who have not matured in something, you are to blame, you need to come up with something else. Feedback unambiguously indicates this.

There are many popular books about the first teaching of children in a family to music or sports, literacy or languages. There are different methods and approaches recommended. Before using them, it is worth trying on whether they suit your character, habits, temperament and experience. But the main thing is not in specific ways and methods, but in vigilance, in constant glance at the “object of education”: How is it going? Is everything all right? No one will tell you this better than the child himself with all his behavior.

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Now it is generally accepted that it is necessary to start a full-fledged education of a child from the age of 6-7 years. A preschooler at this age is already quite independent, able to take care of himself, knows how and understands a lot. Active perception of the child increases, and reaches 7-10 minutes. All this means that the baby is ready to learn. But you need to start preparing it for this moment long before school age. Today I propose to discuss when to start teaching a child to read, and how to do it best.

At what age should a child be taught to read?

Recently, a lot of pedagogical and psychological research has appeared on the topic of when to start teaching a child to read. The authors of these studies almost unanimously insist that the education of the child should begin at the earliest preschool age. According to pundits, the best moment for this is the three-year-old age of the baby. One cannot but agree with the obvious fact that a child at the age of three seems quite tiny. Therefore, anticipating the surprised question of parents and the indignation “Why so early?”, I propose to look into this in more detail before talking about how to teach a child to read. To begin with, I would like to note that the answer lies in some of the unique features of the development of the child at this particular age.

Psychological characteristics of children at 3 years old

Psychologists consider the age of 3 years as a crisis in relation to the development of the child. It is at this time that your child is finally formed as a person. Of course, the baby still does not know how much, and, therefore, it is too early to engage in full-fledged training at this age. But your three-year-old baby is already fully aware of the world and consciously declares his own "I". This period of development of the little man is quite appropriately called - "the age of why". Children who have already learned to talk begin to explore the world around them with great activity and absorb everything like a sponge.

Spatial thinking, logic and memory

It is very important not to miss this stage of the development of the baby, because it is from the age of three that the formation of the inclinations of logical and spatial thinking takes place. That is, the child begins to think figuratively, to understand that objects are voluminous, he can describe and imagine them. The logical beginning of development is manifested at the moment when your daughter or son begins to ask a series of questions that follow one from the other. For example, a dialogue like this:

- Mom, what is it? - the kid asks, pointing to the speed bump, over which the bus rolls with caution.
“The kid is a speed bump,” you say.
- Why lying down? he asks again.
Because it's on the road.
- Why a cop? - no way the baby will calm down.
Because that's what they called him.
- And who called him that ... ..

In addition to logical and spatial thinking, memory is activated in a child at the age of three. It is very important for the child to remember by all means all the answers that he received to his questions. That is why the baby can repeatedly and tirelessly ask the same thing from the parents. He learns, he learns, he remembers. All that is required of you is just to help your crumbs in this. This is the perfect time to start teaching your child to read. Take advantage of this and the “why-why-age” will make it easy enough to teach your child the basics of reading.

Why teach a child to read at 3 years old?

There are at least three arguments in favor of starting teaching a child to read from the age of three.

Firstly, in this way you will develop the memory, logic and imagination of the child - for which it is necessary, I think, there is no need to explain.

Secondly, you will be able to significantly expand the horizons of your crumbs, which means that you will lay the foundations for the ability to communicate and not just defend, but argue your point of view.

Thirdly, avoid serious problems that can imperceptibly come in 3 years when your baby goes to school. Indeed, in the first grade, you will need to read not only the primer, but also the conditions of the problems in mathematics. You can imagine how long it will take him to read the condition, comprehend what he read, and proceed to the solution. During this time, other children will be able to rewrite the problem in a notebook and start solving it. Let your baby be different from others, something good.

How to quickly teach a child to read in syllables?

“It’s impossible at 3 years old!” Some parents retort, and they will be wrong. Still as possible and at the same time without any psychological trauma for the child, without plodding over the primer and significant efforts.

We learn letters.

Obviously, the first thing that should be in your plan, the purpose of which, like a child to learn to read, is to learn letters. Reading without knowing the letters is simply impossible. And already here there is one small, but very important feature, without knowing which you can only aggravate the learning process of the baby. When you pronounce letters to a child, in no case do not pronounce them as follows: “we”, “ge”, “de”, and so on. You can’t do this if you want to quickly teach your child to read. The letters should be pronounced for the child the way they sound - not the names of the letters, but their sounds: “c”, “g”, “d” - clearly and abruptly, when these are consonants and slightly stretch the vowel sounds: “a-a”, "i-i", "yu-yu" ....

If you break this simple rule, then it will be difficult for the child to combine letters into a syllable, he will not be able to do this for a long time, because he simply will not understand why the letter “we” or “ge” in the word should be pronounced differently. Why, for example, the word "mother" should be read that way, and not "meamea". It will be difficult to explain to him later, the difference between the names of the letters and the letters themselves, he will get lost, upset, and may simply dislike both reading and learning in general.

Be sure to hang a colorful beautiful poster with the alphabet in the room of your daughter or son. You can easily buy one at any stationery or bookstore. With the help of visualization, you can activate and train the passive memory of the baby, as the child will always “bump” on the letters with his eyes, and subconsciously memorize them. This is a feature of children's perception, based on craving for everything bright and interesting: pictures, drawings, flowers, butterflies.

Regardless of the age of the child, he needs a bright, visual, methodically well-composed material. Effective visual aids on how to quickly teach a child to read are colorful cubes with depicted letters and pictures (you can only use letters). Plastic letters work well (including the full alphabet, which is done in several colors, for example, separating vowels and consonants in different shades). An ideal choice is an alphabet set with a special magnetic board, or a set of letters of different colors on magnets, for example, to build syllables, words and sentences, attaching them to the refrigerator. A good help for how to teach a child to read are coloring pages with letters and so on.

Put the letters into syllables.

It is very important for the parents of the baby to understand how to teach the child to read correctly, because it directly depends on how quickly the preschooler will quickly navigate in some other subjects. When the baby remembers the letters, feel free to start putting them into syllables.

In order to quickly teach a child to read without delaying this process for many months, we recommend buying letters or making your own alphabet from cardboard. Doing it yourself, do not forget to color the consonants and vowels in different colors, so the child will understand that they are different and will be able to navigate easier and faster when you need to look for the desired letter in their variety.

How to quickly teach a child to read in syllables effortlessly.

It is very important that classes with the baby must be built in the form of a game. That is, we will teach the child to read while playing.

For example, play "fun elevator" with your baby. To do this, build a column of 6-7 letters, consonants, laying them in a row on the floor in height, and to compose syllables, take the letter “a” to begin with. Let this column be a kind of “elevator” in the house, and let the letter “a” be the “booth” of this elevator. Let's start the fun "rolling the letter". Move "a" along the "elevator", placing it near each consonant letter, sound the syllable, ask your baby to repeat it. Get to the top floor, and then let the "cab" go down. Say each syllable in turn.

Let the baby be the first to name what he reads, but do not put pressure on him if he cannot do it right away, and do not delay the wait - tell him or just remind him, and move on. Do not focus on failures and enthusiastically praise what he succeeds.

You need to spend as much time on the game as the baby will be interested in doing it. Then postpone the game for one or two days, and then get it again. The child will not get tired of this form of education, so the baby will read all the new syllables with interest.

As soon as your daughter or son can read simple direct syllables on his own, move on to reverse syllables. Now let the letter "a" "travel" before the consonants, forming the syllables "ab", "ag", "hell" and so on. Lay out the letters freely, now the "a" in your game will be the "boat", and the consonants will be the "piers". With the help of such a “sound boat” you will be able to teach your child to read backward syllables, which means a short way to full-fledged reading first of words, sentences, and then of children's fairy tales and world literature.

How to teach a child to read, realizing the meaning of words

Literally after two or three months of regular classes, your three-year-old baby will be able to confidently read words syllable by syllable in a colorful primer or other bright book adapted specifically for preschoolers.

You need to start teaching your child to read words in their entirety after the baby has learned to reproduce syllables. To begin with, it is better to offer words for reading, the syllables in which consist of two letters, that is, open syllables: “ma-ma”, “ka-sha”, “po-go-da”, “ra-bo-ta”. At first, do not offer your baby words longer than three simple syllables. Connect a mixture of reverse syllables: “yula”, “yar”, “silt”, and the like. Then study the words with closed syllables: “house”, “catfish”, “com”. After the child starts doing this well, you can move on to longer and more complex words in a combination of different syllables: “house”, “mouse”, “sister”, “school”, “pod”, “brook”.

Be sure to discuss with your child each of the words he reads. Repeat this word together, draw pictures depicting a given object or event that the baby has just read about. This, again, will add a game moment to the learning process, form images and memories associated with this word, and, therefore, will help him read it quickly and effortlessly when he meets this word the next time.

Thus, you can not only quickly teach a child to read up to 3.5 years old, and quite confidently, but also ensure that the baby loves the process of reading, instill in him a craving for knowledge and learning. Of course, the acquired skill will need to be constantly maintained, so try to regularly engage with your smart son or smart daughter. Having learned to read at the age of three, having come to school, the child will read books fluently, and already in the first grade he will be able to please you and his teacher with correct, expressive reading. Of course, teaching a child to read is not easy, but your efforts and the time spent will pay off with interest, because he is your future, and you need to take care of the future today.

And a little more about how to teach a child to read:

Hello dear readers of my blog! Psychologist Irina Ivanova is with you. I am sure that you all know about the current trend in the early development of babies.

Maybe among your friends or work colleagues there are mothers vying to discuss which developmental center or early development school they take their baby to, when to teach a child to read (write, count, distinguish a circle from a square, etc.), and is it not too late to start this training at 3-4 years old.

We take into account age features

Some take care of their child because it is prestigious, but most mothers who have heard about the difficulties of learning in elementary school want to make it easier for their baby to adapt to school life. Unfortunately, the early teaching of reading does not take into account the opinion of psychologists, and they all object, as one, to such an escalation of natural processes.

And now, and 50-100 years ago, the possibilities of the psyche of young children have not changed at all. The natural process of development of a healthy child can neither be accelerated nor stopped. His nervous system is genetically programmed for certain stages of maturation of brain structures. For example, up to 5-6 years old, the baby is not able to absorb abstract images.

He operates only with specific categories, with those concepts that he sees now, or with what he saw, heard, felt during his little life. He has a stage of visual-figurative thinking, and no "magic" methods can change this pattern.

At the age of 3-4 years, the child is simply not able to understand what “sound”, “letter”, “word”, “syllable” is. Yes, perhaps he can put the letters into a syllable if he can mechanically memorize their spelling. But hardly one three-year-old kid out of a hundred can read a simple sentence to the end and understand what it says. He will simply forget its beginning before reaching the point.

And the second, no less important aspect: early and middle preschool age is the time of the Game with a capital letter. It is in the game that you can best master knowledge, skills, and the ability to emotionally understand the world. Unable to understand the feelings of others, unable to express their emotions, the baby will remain a "moral invalid", no matter how cruel it may sound.

The real misfortune of all geeks is the inability to establish contacts with others, the inability to determine their place in society. Depression, mental disorders, neuroses, inadequate reactions to ordinary situations, adherence to bad habits - this is the price that a child has to pay in the future for the ambitions of adults.

This is the opinion of researchers in the field of early development: the famous psychoneurologist Professor V. Garbuzov, the German scientist Dr. H. von Kohl and many other authoritative specialists.

What is the right way then?

The main thing that parents need to determine for themselves who decide to teach their child to read, does he want it himself? It is impossible to make happy from under pressure, at the heart of all events and actions, even the smallest, is an incentive. Usually, the desire to read, get acquainted with letters appears by 6-7, less often by 5 years. This is the sensitive (most favorable) period to start learning to read.

It is best if the parents of the baby also love reading, and regularly read the best works of children's literature to their child. The cult of a good book will also be passed on to the younger reader, because he so wants to be like mom or dad.

For involuntary memorization of letters, you need to hang a children's alphabet near the crib. Going to bed, the baby will see the letters and memorize them faster. Choose this alphabet carefully. You can often see how, for example, the letter "O" accompanies the image BUT chkov (points), or Abezyany (monkeys).

Where does learning to read begin? Do you think from the addition of letters into syllables and words? By no means, reading by syllables is far from the first stage. It is much more important to teach a child to isolate a sound from a word or syllable by ear, to divide words into syllables, to be able to find the first and last sound, to invent words for a given sound.

It is from this preparatory stage that flawless writing begins. Such exercises in a playful and competitive form can be given only 5-15 minutes a day, and the benefits of such training will be enormous.

This point of view is supported by our expert - family psychologist Irina Karpenko.

natural process

Brain maturation lasts from birth to age 15. Neuropsychologists distinguish three stages of this process:

First- from the beginning of pregnancy to 3 years. At this time, the first functional block of the brain is formed: structures and systems responsible for the bodily, emotional and cognitive state of the child.

Second- from 3 to 7-8 years. During this period, the second functional block matures, which controls perception: visual, gustatory, auditory, kinesthetic, smell, touch.

The third- from 7-8 to 12-15 years old. The stage of development of the third block, which organizes active, conscious mental activity.

Blocks are formed sequentially, and attempts to jump the stage distort the natural development.

The reaction to early learning may not appear immediately, but it will still come back to haunt years later - the inability to build relationships with other people, tics, obsessive movements, stuttering, speech disorders.

In addition, reading at an early age is a strong mental stress that causes blood flow to the cerebral cortex, which leads to impoverishment of the blood supply to the centers of respiration and digestion. As a result, spasms of blood vessels occur, which in turn give rise to a whole bunch of diseases.

Premature learning to read is also dangerous for the eyes. Ophthalmologists do not advise teaching a child to read before the age of 5-6 years, while the formation of the ciliary muscle has not yet ended. Visual stress at an early age can lead to the development of myopia.

Game time

Another negative side of the early intellectual development of the baby is desocialization.

In preschool childhood, the basic concepts of moral principles are laid: kindness, pity, shame, love, loyalty, devotion, honesty, justice ... The most important thing for a baby at this stage is to learn to contact the outside world, interact with other people and feel them. That is why at a “tender age” the unconditional love of the mother is extremely important for the baby. Through maternal affection, tenderness and care, the baby learns to love the world and others.

It is important for a baby of the first years of life to enrich his inner world with positive experiences, and for three or four years old it is also role-playing games. The famous psychologist Daniil Elkonin said that preschool age is such a stage of mental development, the leading activity of which is the game. It is thanks to the game that the most important changes in the child's psyche are made and preparations are made for a new stage of development - learning.

When a child in the early stages of development is given to learn numbers and letters instead of games, nursery rhymes, children's songs and rhymes, the formation of the emotional sphere is inhibited. Filling this gap will be almost impossible. The child will not fully develop such qualities as the ability to empathize, sympathize, love - the key to building a strong family, friendship, cooperation. Remember the famous geeks: the vast majority of them suffered from various complexes, insecurity, depression, generated by the inability to build relationships with peers and with the opposite sex. However, even kids who were not taught 5 languages ​​from birth, but simply taught to read from 2-3 years old, experience similar difficulties, because at an early age, when it was necessary to master the culture of communication, they sat at books.

In addition, early learning has a negative impact on the formation of figurative thinking. Thus, a psychoneurologist, professor Vilen Garbuzov is sure that early intellectualization leads to "schizoid intoxication", replacing children's spontaneity and interest in wildlife with abstract things that young children are not yet able to comprehend.

We are talking about the dangerous trend of excessively early (up to 5 and a half years) learning to read, write, mathematics, a foreign language, chess, music from notes, learning on a display, playing with complex electronic devices. Letters, numbers, diagrams, notes crowd out and suppress imagination and imaginative thinking,” the professor warns.

Without understanding

When learning to read, one of the most important aspects is the presence of motivation. The kid should learn not at the behest of the parents, but of his own free will. The initiative must come from the child. After all, the learning process is not easy, and if the child does not have an understanding of why he needs it, the lesson will quickly get bored, and reading lessons will be associated with tedious and aimless work. Yes, a child at the age of three can read fluently, but this is unlikely to bring him joy. At this age, children still read purely technically: the process of folding letters into words is difficult, and while the child reads the sentence to the end, he already forgets what he read at the beginning. There is not enough strength to understand and assimilate the text. These are the age features of younger preschool age - up to 5-6 years. According to statistics, 70% of children under 5 do not understand what they read on their own. But kids perfectly grasp and absorb information when adults read to them.

Love for life

The desire to master the art of reading appears in a child, as a rule, by the age of 6-7, in rare cases - at 5 years.

Aspiration arises when a child imitates older siblings who can read or book-loving parents. Sometimes a child can be spurred on by meeting a peer who has learned to read. At this age, the technical skill is easily mastered, and the child is already able to concentrate on the wording and the meaning of the story at the same time.

The kid enthusiastically reads children's books, discovering amazing worlds. After all, an interesting occupation captures the whole, and reading (when it is not under duress) becomes a real aesthetic pleasure: developing, enriching, helping to reveal the inner world.

Do not deprive the child of the joy of learning, do not drive him forward, and then he will show amazing abilities, learning not just to put words together from syllables, but to love literature for life.

How did I learn to read? It all started with a magnetic alphabet that my mother gave me. There weren't many toys in our house, so I focused completely on learning letters, connecting them into syllables, and syllables into words. At the age of four, I read fluently and in kindergarten, instead of playing with dolls, I sat in a secluded corner with a thick, tattered book of fairy tales, which I begged from the teacher. Most of my peers learned to read and write with the help of the school curriculum.

Today's kids are different. Many of them already know how to read before school. This is facilitated by parents, following the methods of early development. Some of these methods, such as those of Pavel Tyulenev, contain promises that babies will learn to read by the age of two. But the following question remains open: Is this early development good for children? And one more question:

Regarding the first question, Is early development good for children?”once met with interesting information. I'll retell some of my thoughts.

The bottom line is that following the method of early development, we do not give the child the opportunity to progress in a natural way. The psychological development of a child goes through several stages: sensory-motor (up to 2 years, when the baby learns the world through tactile sensations), figurative (up to 7 years, when he masters speech, gets acquainted with reality through a symbolic game, realizes his own "I") and logical (after 7 years, when the child learns to compare facts, build a logical chain, make independent decisions). Reading belongs to the category of logical operations, and teaching a child to read when he has not yet passed the stage of symbolic play means going against the laws of nature.

Psychologists note that persistent attempts to teach a child to read at an early age can play a cruel joke. If a child learns to read before talking, then there may be problems in live communication, a delay in speech development.

If the baby has not yet formed a spatial orientation, and he confuses “right” with “left”, this may affect reading. For example, a child will read a word from the letter he likes, or "see" the word in a mirror image.

With the fact that the baby must go through certain stages in its development, many mothers will agree, having seen this from their own experience. Maybe it also happened to you that the kid, knowing the letters at the age of 3-4 and even being able to combine them into syllables, consciously and most importantly with pleasure, began to read only by the age of 6-7? Therefore, another question arises: is it worth the haste?

So at what age can a child learn to read? Maybe we should give up any attempts to develop it from an early age?

In fact, there are no clear age norms. Everything is individual. Some of the kids are already talking and reading easily by the age of 4. Some people find reading difficult.

The main rule is no pressure, pressure, and even more so, verbal or physical violence! If you see that the child easily perceives information, and he likes it, then take a moment and teach the baby to read.

If your baby is withdrawing into himself because of your attempts to teach him to read, change tactics. Otherwise, you risk raising a child who hates learning. Unobtrusively, little by little. It was these recommendations that my friend, a teacher of elementary grades by education and vocation, gave me when she saw how I was trying to teach my eldest to read. Following the advice, I soon saw positive results.

Don't be discouraged if your toddler only knows a few letters while the next door boy of the same age can read fluently. In practice, there are many cases when children who learned to read later caught up and overtook their school colleagues who read from early childhood. Be patient and you will succeed!