Be Excellent To Each Other

My son has been given a book from school that he needs to practice letters in each week.

He is not too keen to do it and if we push too hard he will just refuse to do it. With him its all about distraction and I suppose some bribes

I understand that Phonics is a standard thing so the letters he gets in his book will be in the same order in any apps I get for the Ipad to encourage his interest

Any recommendations? I got one called teach you monster to read but wondered if anyone had any other ideas?

How old is he now?

Seventeen.

We used 'Thats not my....' series of books. As it has touch as well as the words.

MiniKov prefers books to the ipad/kindle.

Also putting subtitles on the TV helps..

3!

The app I have is quite good there is a game where a "monster" that he was able to design at the start of the game has to get sheep into one of 2 pens with the letter A or S. This is following the letters he has been giving in his book from school so far.

I would like something that lets him maybe draw the letters on an IPad himself as this is what he needs to do the book.

The idea with this would be do the book for 2 nights, then on the 2nd night have some Phonics on the IPad, then maybe at the end of the week let him have 10 minutes to do what he wants on it.

I use guided access to lock him to just the Phonics app

Oh I'm no use then, I thought he was older because you mentioned school.

At that age all I did was read to mine. I (still) try and read at least one book a day - with enthusiasm and inflection to encourage excitement about reading. The learning takes care of itself.

My kids liked Pocket Phonics, good into for letter forming too.

https://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/abc-poc ... 89971?mt=8

Nice, will check that out. Mini Fop is getting into forming letters at the moment.

The app which has been brilliant for getting Mini Fop interested in words and sounds is Endless Alphabet. Genuinely charming and useful.

And there's an Endless Reader version which gets them used to forming sentences with new words.

But I'd also say don't let the iPad become a replacement for books. Go analogue and get some Vordermann in his life. This book is great and has loads of gold stars in it to reward them with.

The Vorder Man

One book at day? You are lucky mine loves to be read to, I did 3 surprisingly long Christmas Mr Men books this morning alone!

Then its 2-4 before bed depending on how good he is a manipulating us for extras ones!

I couldn't agree more with this statement. Mine (5yo and 3yo) basically teach each other, with the older girl getting practice reading to her brother. She's even started doing flash cards with him

I get mine to read to me, he loves it. so do I..

What about something like this? There was a 'write' one, but I can't find it now.

http://www.mandmdirect.com/01/details/M ... aw-Animals

So do mine, but I have a business, a house and 13 animals to take care of - can't sit and read all day. At 7 and 4 they both read to themselves now.





That's basically the same here - and I think Izzy's reading aloud to Olly is what's got him reading early. So sweet to watch.

13 animals! One cat is enough for me

The 3 books were all at 6am when he woke up!

I told mine to "get back to bloody bed" when they woke at 6:20. You're obviously way more understanding than I am.

The norm for my son is 5.30-6.30 every morning Even if there is an event that means he goes to bed late around 9pm its still the same.

Routine is he wakes up, turns on the bedroom light then starts shouting "Daddy come in" or "Daddy come up" as sometimes I will sleep downstairs if my wife's morning sickness is bad.

Failure to respond within 10 minutes will result in him taking off all his clothes and chucking his nappy out of his room. If we still don't respond he will start pulling books of his shelf, final stage is "Daddy I'm doing a wee"

It never gets to the wee stage and I usually go in when he shouts and delude myself he will go back to sleep!

He's got you wrapped around his little finger, hasn't he

Pretty much

My view is he will soon be at school, then before I know it will be embarrassed to be seen with me! So I pretty much spend as much time as I can with him.

Next Friday my wife is away for the weekend, I've never put him to bed on my own. I do 95% of it half the week, but always asks for his mum at the end. He knows she is away as well, he keeps telling me that we will be watching the Simpsons and drinking beer when mummy's away

No idea where he has got the fixation with the Simpsons he may have walked in once or twice when I've had it on but I quickly turned it off when this happened.

I'm sure you'll do fine

Talking of reading... I started reading George's marvellous medicine with my two last night. They're 4 and 2 so I'm not sure we'll get to the end of it but I'm enjoying it at least. I'm trying to give it all the enthusiasm that Rik Mayall did on childrens TV back in the 80's.