J learnt her alphabet early as I took her to sing and sign classes when she was about 18 months old where they sang the alphabet, I've put words up around the house labelling objects and she has spent time on the computer copying words but apart from that I've not really done much work with her up until June last year when I started the beginnings of reading. Of course I've been reading to them all so much that she had picked up some and she memorised her favourite books to read to me and I'm sure given time and continuing naturally in that way she would have learnt to read in her own time but I just wanted to speed that up a bit so that she could then read about anything she wanted to read about. I think it opens so many doors and she is loving it!
I started off doing 15 - 20 minutes a day with her playing word games, practising letters, colouring letters etc then as she progressed we've made that time every other day. Now that she is on series 9 of Peter and Jane we perhaps do it twice a week. She can choose to read to me at any time which she often does and its so lovely to be read to, she is quite expressive and puts voices on for the different characters!
S is going to be 6 in September and has been doing similar to J since June but not as much. Its actually quite amazing how she has progressed and I think she will be reading fluently before she is 7 and then I have B who is 3 and is so interested in what the others are doing she is picking up words and knows her alphabet I shouldn't be surprised if she is even earlier!
