February 28, 1934 in The Nursery World
Learning to Read
A boy of three who can almost read but still speaks indistinctly is the subject of one of this week’s letters
“Elderly parent” writes: “I should be so glad of your advice again about my elder son, not three years and four months old. At about two years, by stopping at every house and road name, and asking what the individual letters were (the names as a whole only satisfied him for a very brief period), he learnt to know capital letters. Then he gave them a long rest, til I began to think he had forgotten them. Recently, however, this interest has revived, and has gone a stage further, so that he definitely wants to read. When told the title of a new book, for instance, he demands to know which word is which, and more often than not will spell them out. From the inside of his books, too, he has got to know a good many of the ‘little’ letters, and there are one or two small words, such as ‘of’, that he can always read. So far, I have deliberately refrained, as far as possible, from doing anything but answer his questions, except that, since the school to which he will probably go teaches ‘phonetic’reading, I have from time to time explained that, for instance, ‘D’ says ‘de.’ I cannot help feeling that at the moment this is merely confusing for him, but it seemed desirable to make some kind of link with future teaching, and to a certain extent he seems to grasp the idea. I realise, of course, that this spelling-out of words, and learning of unconnected small words, is unorthodox - but it is his method, not mine! Do you think the time is now ripe to give him rather more definite help, and to provide suitable material, instead of leaving him to choose his own? And, if so, could you recommend a book or books, please?
“He has learnt to read numbers, up to hundreds, and to count - I enclose notes I made of this process. He knows the days of the week, too, and each morning wants to know that day, and date! But this development in other ways has by no means kept pace. He will scarcely attempt to dress or undress himself, and can only manage very big and easy buttons (a buttoning frame was treated with indifference, though he enjoyed earlier Montessori apparatus, such as the cylinders). Writing, or drawing, too, is a weak point. At Christmas, he suggested, and enjoyed making ‘kisses’ on the dozen or so cards he chose and sent out, but they were extremely wobbly, and often unrecognisable. Recently, he was given a ‘pictures to colour’ book, and enjoyed trying to do this, but with amazingly unskilful results. He has paper and pencils and crayons always available, but very rarely uses them. He can, however, thread beads on to string, and ‘sew’ picture cards with holes, quite well and likes doing them, in moderation. Though he talks incessantly and intelligently (with a continuous stream of ‘why’s’), his speech is very indistinct. Strangers can hardly ever understand him, and we cannot always do so ourselves. When this happens, he will try hard, but often unsuccessfully, to pronounce clearly, and if this fails sometimes gives a very good description of what he means. We have never worried him about pronunciation, and when he is talking to other people we merely ‘translate’ unobtrusively, when necessary. He does not seem to notice, or at any rate mind this. Should we take steps - and, if so, what steps- to redress what seems to be a lop-sided development? Or should we leave him to go his own way and pace., encouraging interests as they appear, and trusting that hands and tongue will have their turn later on. He was always backward in talking, hardly using words at all until till he was nearly two, though he understood well, and could make his wants known. But at one time, he seemed quite advanced for his age, in skill with his hands. He has a brother of one year eight months, with whom he is on good terms, and he has occasional companionship of his own age though it is difficult to arrange for this often enough. I do not know of a nursery school near here, but this term I am hoping to send him to a eurhythmics class for pre-school children - as being better than nothing! His indistinct speech is, of course, a handicap with other children.”
Yes, it would be a very good plan now to give your little boy some more systematic help in reading, since he so much wants this. There are two series of reading books which you would find very helpful: the first, Reading in Twelvemonth, published by Routledge. These books are very well illustrated and printed. The other series is The Kingsway Readers, published by Evans Bros., Montague House, Russell Square, W.C.1. You should get the Teacher’s Manual, as well as the Introductory Books One and Two, which give very simple pictures and sentences.
It is also a very good suggestion to let him go to a eurhythmics class for little children, as that will certainly help less to redress the balance of his general development. Play with other children would be the best help for this one-sided-ness of interest, and it is important to make sure that he always has attractive and useful material on the lines you describe, for painting and drawing and the use of hands generally.
There are, however, genuine individual differences amongst children in the direction of their interests, even as young as this. I should not try to urge him to thread beads and draw, but I should try to make it clear that you yourself valued those activities just as much as you did reading. Sometimes one can communicate one’s own prejudices to a child without intending to. Much depends, too, upon the material that you offer him being of the right sort. The colouring of already printed pictures is not the best help to a child in his early artistic development. Large brushes, two or three jars of ready mixed colour and large sheets of kitchen paper fastened up on a drawing board, that can be placed on a chair at a convenient height for the child to use or standing on the floor against the wall if he has a cushion to kneel on when he used it, are found much more attractive and fruitful. In one school for young children that I know, they have a very good plan. Large sheets of kitchen paper are hung on to brass hooks screwed into a drawing board, a dozen or so hung on top of the other. The child uses each of these in turn, making a design or a picture with large strokes of his brush and water colour, and then lifts each off the hooks as it is done, and puts it to dry. This kind of arrangement stimulates the child’s imaginative expression to an astonishing extent, and even with children of your boys’ age, one can get a series of most delightful designs or pictures of people and events.
