Avoid Learning Pitfalls: First Step, Identify Them

Pitfall: Your Child may have Strong Verbal Skills and Interest in Reading, and yet Needs, Movement, Imagination and Play to Learn

Your child (age 5-7) may show early signs of thinking logically and understanding complex concepts, yet developmentally he still needs a lot of play time to continue to develop his brain through use of his imagination.  Your child’s brain still primarily initiates thinking and problem solving with his multi-sensory functions. He therefore benefits most from 3-dimensional multi-sensory input in order to learn.

Because of your child’s strong verbal skills and interest in reading, it would be easy to assume that your early child is ready to learn to read using the techniques that are used in school for older children.

There is risk in this assumption, however. The risk is that he will not learn, by using these traditional methods, to read the 290 abstract words and symbols that are found in the elementary school reading materials.

 Your child may not learn to read because of the way his brain still processes most information (3-dimensionally through his sensory input), and his inability to process with his senses the abstract, 2-dimensional nature of all written symbols and 50% of the words your reader will encounter in K-3 grades.  

 All written characters (symbols and sight words) are abstract. 

 

This means that written characters have no inherent meaning to them and cannot be processed with the senses like concrete words (e.g., cat, house, ball, jump) can be processed.

 

Your child, who still learns primarily through his sensory processing (a 3-dimensional form of thinking), must gain command of the 290 written characters and abstract (sight) words (e.g., you, me, it, the, and, on) in order to learn to read.  

It may be easy for your child to memorize the alphabet and a few words. However, this memorization process will not provide your child with the understanding and recognition of abstract letters and words that he requires in order to learn to read with comprehension.