LarrySanger.org

Essay on Baby Reading

I started teaching my little boy to read beginning at 22 months, and by age four, he was decoding text (reading, in that sense) quite fluently at the sixth grade level, or above.

I’ve discovered that there isn’t a lot written about the subject of baby reading.  So I have written a 45,000-word essay on the subject:

How and Why I Taught My Toddler to Read
PDF – DOC – HTML
(the PDF is best)

I’ve worked on this for two years, off and on.  It is formatted as a 140-page book, which I’m presenting to the public free, under a Creative Commons (CC-by-nc-nd) license.  Here is a video of my boy reading to me when he was two, then three, then four.  At age 3 years, 10 months, he read the First Amendment of the Constitution (in the video at 2:47):

How’d we do it? We used a variety of methods: I read many books to him while pointing to the words, I showed him over 1,000 home-made flashcards (careful: 122 MB zip file) arranged in phonetic groupings, we watched the Your Baby Can Read videos, we used these (150+) PowerPoint presentations I made for him (here’s an enormous 862MB zip file), and we did many other literacy-building activities.  All of this was done in a completely pressure-free way; I taught him to say “that’s enough” and immediately stopped when, if not before, he got tired of any activity. (UPDATE: these flashcards are in the process of being converted into a high-quality digital version at ReadingBear.org.)

I hope that by publicizing our case, we will raise awareness of the methods available that can, in fact, teach very small children to read with about as much ease as they can learn spoken language or sign language.

Working on early childhood educational content and issues is now my full-time job; among other things, I’m planning a new tool that will emulate the best aspects of Your Baby Can Read, but it will be free.  I’ve passed off leadership of WatchKnow.org to a new CEO, the very capable Dr. Joe Thomas.  Expect to see regular updates on this blog about my work, and I’ll be asking for your feedback about my various plans and ideas.

Please use this page to comment on both the essay and the video.

UPDATE: if you want a copy of the essay on your handheld device (and can’t figure out how to put the PDF on your device), you can buy it for $2.99 from the Amazon Store.  Someone asked for this, and I obliged!

UPDATE 2 (Oct. 3, 2011): my son is now five years old. He is now reading daily on his own, and has read himself a couple dozen chapter books, including The Story of the World, Vol. 1: The Ancient World (314 pgs.).

UPDATE 3 (Dec. 16, 2012): at six, my son switches between “serious” literature which he reads with a dictionary app, including Treasure Island, Tom Sawyer, and The Secret Garden, and easier literature including Beverly Cleary books, the Hardy Boys, and Encyclopedia Brown. If his answers to regular comprehension questions are any indication, he’s understanding what he reads pretty well.

UPDATE 4 (Mar. 26, 2013): I’m delighted to report that my second son, following methods similar to those I used with my first, is now 2.5 years old and reading at a first grade level.

UPDATE 5 (Aug. 25, 2014): my second is following in his brother’s footsteps, reading a version of the Odyssey (he’s crazy about Greek mythology—go figure) at age 3.5:

UPDATE 6 (June 4, 2020): for over a year now, my older son (now 14) has been studying a humanities sequence of my design (including history, literature, art, philosophy, religion, etc.). The texts are classics in English translation, including the Bible, Gilgamesh, myths and texts from ancient Sumeria and Egypt, Hesiod, all of Homer, selections from Confucius, Lao Tsu, long selections from Herodotus and Thucydides, plays by Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, and Aristophanes, Socratic dialogues of Plato, much of The Republic, much of Aristotle’s Poetics and Nicomachean Ethics, other philosophy, Plutarch’s life of Alexander, and just now he’s getting into Livy. The younger son (now 9) finished Harry Potter a second time and is now reading The Lord of the Rings. Like his brother, he has read plenty of age-appropriate classics like Treasure Island and Tom Sawyer. Both have managed to get by without reading a single Language Arts text (I wouldn’t do that to them).

by

Larry Sanger

“Internet Knowledge Organizer.” Currently President of the Knowledge Standards Foundation, started Wikipedia and various other educational and reference sites. Ph.D., Philosophy, Ohio State, 2000. [read more]

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132 responses to “Essay on Baby Reading”

  1. Stina

    Hi larry,
    Thanks for taking the time to reply! =)

    Well, it took less than a week to eliminate the problem(hopefully), with a daily sounding out game and review of letter sounds.

    The WatchKnow site looks great, my little boy has already been exploring. I’ll look forward to seeing WatchKnow reader, and how your #2 progresses with it!

    Reply
    1. Larry Sanger

      Fascinating that it seemed to work!

      Reply
  2. Dangervil

    Hi Larry. I love your website and absolutely love your video of your son reading! A friend of mine recommended your website to me and I absolutely love it. I actually wanted to know exactly 1. HOW MANY BOOKS DID YOU READ TO YOUR SON PER DAY/WEEK 2. HOW MANY BOOKS DID YOU READ 3. DID YOU READ THE SAME BOOKS FOR A WHOLE WEEK OR DID YOU CHANGE THEM UP? 4. did you read chapter picture books to you son or was it just picture books.

    Reply
    1. Larry Sanger

      Hi Dangervil, thanks so much for your positive feedback. It means a lot.

      To answer your questions:

      1. Books per day, well, it depended entirely on what age he was. As a baby we read at least a half-dozen board books, sometimes we read a stack of them all at once, and read more during mealtimes as well. So, lots, as a baby. The books we could read when he was two were longer, so it then dropped down to an average of 2-3 books per day, perhaps, sometimes more and sometimes less, depending on the books. But since he was three or so, and definitely now that he’s almost five, we *finish* reading a book maybe once a day, or every other day, since most books we read are longer. Occasionally of course we still pick up relatively easy or short books and can get through them over lunch (as we did an Usborne Young Reading book yesterday).

      2. How many books, TOTAL? I’ve never counted them up, though I’ve wondered. We have many hundreds of books on our shelves, probably well over 1,000, and we’ve read the vast majority of those, so probably over 1,000. How much over, I don’t know. Of course, many of these are very short and can be read in 20-30 minutes.

      3. I’ve been wondering this myself, now that I’m reading a fair bit with my second, who is now 6 months. I think I tended to read the same book daily for several days in a row, then put it down for a few weeks, then pick it up again, etc. I tried to pay attention to what excited my son. I seem to remember putting several books in front of him and letting him choose by reaching/pointing. He often wanted to read books again and again, especially when he was one year old. This habit stopped rather abruptly sometime when he was two.

      4. I read many different kinds of books–basically, if there is a kind of book for a little kid, we read that kind, probably a lot. I didn’t start reading chapter books of any kind to him until he was two, I think, or maybe 20-24 months–and the first one was Winnie-the-Pooh. I now know that there are simpler chapter books than that. We didn’t actually finish a chapter book until shortly before his third birthday. Other people read lots of chapter books to their babies, but I don’t see the point. If you’re going to spend the time, why not read something that they have some prayer of understanding?

      Reply
  3. Gene

    The youngest graduate of Washington State University learned to read at 18 months. The mother said she laid out flash cards and her baby daughter learned them after two months. This is another case that suggests early reading may be an important factor in developing academic abilities. Early readers appear to be able to read faster and to remember more. These reading skills make it easier to achieve academics. We also need to learn how much reading books during the early years influences academic abilities.
    http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/42772396/

    Reply
  4. Lezah St Jean

    I finally sat down and read your essay. I should be sleeping but I was captivated and there are so many things that I wish to respond to. I am sure I can’t remember them all now but I wanted to share a few of them.

    1. My son will be 18 months in a few weeks and I will be teaching him to read, early. Not just so that he can get ahead, or for any elitist reasons. I just want him to be able to get a little push start in the hopes that school (I plan to homeschool) won’t be a struggle for him. I want him to develop the same life long love of learning that I have. I also want him to get a post secondary education, even if it is a tradeschool. I excelled at school, to a point, I reached 10th grade and became bored and refused to do any work and skipped classes to go to my school library to read Encyclopedias. I still have the same lust to know everything. I am sure you can relate.
    I learnt to read at an early age, my brother, who is 4 years older, was in remedial reading classes that my mother tutored when he was in 1st and 2nd grade. I got to be there at the time and I learnt to read at 3.
    My husband on the flip side struggled all through school and it is a miracle that he graduated. He had tutors and was in special education for learning disorders.
    I have to concede my son is half him and half me so I have no idea what his take on school will be. But if I can give him some tools now to ease the burden of learning to read when he is 5-6 I will. My son was also failure to thrive for 6 months and some studies say that over 80% of FTT infants have mental retardation or a learning disorder. Currently he has a speech delay. As his mum I will try my hardest to help him any way I can.

    Here are 2 anecdotal stories of early reading sisters. I taught both girls to read by the time the were 3.
    Sister A was average all around, a little emotionally immature, but she hit early childhood milestones in the middle of average. She too loved to read the Magic Treehouse books. She devoured them. In kindergarten she was reading beyond a 5th grade level. She was taught with a similar approach to your son. I garnered my word list from S. Blumenfeld’s “How to Tutor” It was hard for her to understand the more pure phonics approach. Hooked in Phonics was very popular at the time, and very frustrating for her. However by using these word family cards in a flash card, whole language approach she learnt to read with ease.
    Sister B… She was literally the most astounding toddler I and many other people had ever encountered. She talked at an early age. At about 13 months old she could flawlessly sing ABCs, and count 20 one on one correlated objects. She climbed out of her crib at 9 months and walked the same month. She was 10 months old and would walk to the computer turn it on and ask to play ‘puter. She potty trained herself by watching her sister at about 16 months. At 3 she would play on the same level as 8-9 year olds when she went to the park. At 22 months she talked on the phone to my mum and explained in detail the water cycle. Even with the accent barrier my mum could understand her clearly. At 3 her and I had some wonderful debates using the Socratic Method. I was reading her a college text book on World Religious and she became obsessed asking me many questions about Buddah. You see where I am going? I am sure you have heard of many brilliant kids like this. She had a mind that was able to take things apart and put them back together. The quasi whole language phonics intense approach did not work for her. She was able to decode pure phonics with easy.
    Skip forward 8 years: Sister A is in 7th grade, top of her class and has been accepted to a magnet school, she entered kindergarten a year early much the the worries of school officials. She loves school and is obviously thriving.
    Sister B just finished 5th grade and has struggled for years, she had a tutor but to my understanding she will be repeating 5th grade again next year.
    Just wanted to share my examples of 2 early readers, in the beginning it is just so hard to know if there is a benefit or not to early reading. However I figure it doesn’t hurt to try.
    I think that the struggles with Sister B is that she is not a child that can sit still. She needs to be constantly challenged at a high level. I think that the public schooling system just didn’t do her justice.

    Reply
  5. Paula nassif

    Hello mr. Larry,

    I will start to teach my 5 months baby to read next month ( need to prepare material first and also I want to do more research and fully understand this science). I bought Dr Doman book ( how to teach your baby to read) two days ago and have already finished it, I am so eager to start! However, I have a question and maybe you could have an opinion. My husband and I are Brazilian but we leave in the UK with our little man. My husband although Brazilian he loved in France while a toddler so his first tongue was French ( he does not have an accent like I have with English). Well my question is: in which language should we do the flaschcard? Portuguese, English or French? I would be fascinated to see my baby read the three language but I don’t know if it is possible this early… Any thoughts? Many thanks

    Reply
    1. GPC

      You should go to brillkids.com and ask on their forum. The issue of teaching reading in more than one language does come up from time-to-time.

      Reply
  6. Larry Sanger Blog » I gih dah bah! (update about the baby’s “education”)

    […] also sometimes do the YBCR slide-the-picture-out cards.  Haven’t yet done my Fleschcards.  I don’t expect we’ll have to, because Reading Bear is going to cover the same […]

    Reply
  7. Gene

    Teach young children how to draw.
    This worked with my son when he was young. He learned to draw cartoon type drawings. I think young children can learn other drawing skills depending on the type of drawing books you give them.
    Instead of giving your child a coloring book where the fill in the colors, give your child a drawing book along with some blank paper. Let them have some fun scribbling pictures from drawing books that illustrate how to draw. Your child will gradually learn some drawing skills, as long as they have fun drawing. If you are a little more ambitious, you can draw along with your child and encourage them. Always keep it fun.
    You can find many drawing books on eBay by doing a search of
    draw lot
    or
    draw set
    Here are some of the many types of drawing books your child can have some fun:
    Animals or pets
    Cartoons
    Funny faces or caricatures
    People
    Monsters
    Airplanes, cars, trucks
    Dinosaurs
    Maps
    Plants
    Scenery

    Reply
  8. Dan

    You don’t happen to know about William James Sidis, child prodigy of the early 1900’s, do you?

    His parents had very interesting opinions on child rearing. Here’s a snippet from the wiki:

    “Sidis’s parents believed in nurturing a precocious and fearless love of knowledge, for which they were criticized. Sidis could read the New York Times at 18 months,[2] had reportedly taught himself eight languages (Latin, Greek, French, Russian, German, Hebrew, Turkish, and Armenian) by age eight, and invented another, which he called Vendergood.”

    If you don’t know about this, I suggest you digest some of the interesting reads from this website:
    http://sidis.net/boris_sidis_archives.htm
    http://sidis.net/

    In my brief personal opinion, most, if not all, children can learn just about any skill set/intellectual area, and whatever catches their eye they will gravitate towards.

    I hope this helps you in your exploration of early learning.

    Reply
    1. Larry Sanger

      Haven’t heard of William James Sidis. There have been many prodigies that were ultimately “created” by their parents, haven’t there?

      Doman, too, has said things like “children can learn just about any skill set/intellectual area.” I find this too vague to evaluate. If interpreted broadly, the claim is very obviously false. Most children cannot learn quantum mechanics tomorrow. No child can learn any but the most rudimentary facts about history before the age of two or three, though they could parrot without understanding. And if the claim is admittedly vague, the interesting question is then: what exactly do we want to say here? By failing to articulate more clearly what children are capable of learning, and how, we have arguably made the case for early education harder to make.

      Reply
  9. Michelle Breum

    I think you are doing great work. The free part is super! The technology you are using is good for Reading Bear. I noticed you called ending blends suffixes and beginning blends prefixes. Work with prefixes and suffixes is helpful in decoding words. Here is post with some free resources about root words, prefixes, and suffixes. http://beginningreadinghelp.blogspot.com/2010/07/teaching-root-words-prefixes-and.html
    I’d like to promote and use your site, but blends would need to be defined as blends for me to promote your site. I’m pulling for this program. If you need any help please contact me. You can find information about me at my Beginning Reading Help blog.
    If you’d like to connect, I’m in a few forums and groups.
    We Teach Children to Read – http://www.facebook.com/pages/We-Teach-Children-to-Read/103519196359196
    We Teach – http://www.weteachgroup.com/
    Beginning Reading Help BlogFrog community – http://theblogfrog.com/1501335/forum
    Best wishes and keep up the good work!

    Reply
  10. aly in va.

    I’m curious to know which ipad apps you use for flashcards with your young one? We used a similar method (Doman) for my oldest when she was an infant, and she was a very early reader as well (before age 2) and continues to be an advanced student. We also used a strong phonics approach instead of strictly flashcards (sight words). Thanks!

    Reply
    1. Larry Sanger

      This needs to be updated, but here is a list from last April: https://larrysanger.org/2011/04/reviews-of-educational-apps-for-little-kids/

      Reply
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