Your guide to teach your child reading and writing

First episode

It is no longer acceptable in the twenty first century that a man grew up ignorant about the simplest teaching skills: Reading and writing.

Every nation has its own language of which it should be proud and convey it to its people.

There is a big difference between the language which a child should realize to master reading and writing and know how to communicate with others in writing, and the slang which a child uses in oral communication with its family and friends.

In Arabic, we can discriminate between mastering classical Arabic and slang where it is easy for a child to realize slang since its early years, but the classical Arabic needs effort from the parents and the child to learn.

Because there are certain conditions for each language, the used methods in teaching Arabic to a child may differ from English and other languages.

Many children become victims of either the ignorance of their parents of the correct methods of teaching or the society which spreads slang at the expense of the classical language and sending children to foreign schools; hence the result is deterioration of classical Arabic.

This does not mean that all children should excel in Arabic, but means they have to learn it until they gain enough skill to understand higher levels of sentence structure and the ability to form good sentences without wrong structure and bad style.

The thing which you should take into consideration is when you desire to teach your child Arabic or any another language, you should know when to start this training. This is associated with multiple factors, the most important of which is mental maturity.

It is natural that there should be a balance between corporal maturity and chronological age of a child from one side and mental maturity and the mental age on the other side.

This is what psychologists call "the degree of intelligence,"

where many measures of intelligence depend on defining the individual level in terms of a child's mental age, so if mental age is compatible with chronological life, a child is normal.

However, if mental age is little, where the mentality of a six-years-old child is described as the mentality of a four-years-old child, then the child is abnormal and his intelligence is low.

Moreover, mental age may precede time and in that case a child becomes smart more than normal and may be described as genius.

Therefore, the first thing to focus on is mental maturity of child to reach a stage in which it can pronounce letters properly in its daily life and to arrange its things.

For example, a child can realize the differences and distinct colors and shapes.

In addition to the mental maturity, there is the physical maturity because the skill of reading and writing needs good sight, good hearing, and good pronunciation.

If your child suffers a problem in these senses, you should be careful when training it and we shall provide you with help and aid during our course.

Because writing and reading are correlative, you have to take into consideration that a child needs manual skills so as to learn writing.

It is well-known that a three or four-years-old child cannot control the muscles of its fingers well, therefore holding a pencil is very difficult for it.

The suitable time for this process is the age of six or five at least, but this does not mean that training is postponed until that age, but you may start reading exercises and when it reaches the proper age start with teaching it writing.

You should also note that there is a difference between boys and girls, where the mental growth of girls precedes the mental growth of boys.

Therefore, some psychiatrists say that girls should join school at six, whereas boys at seven or eight.

Moreover, girls control their fingers better than boys which means good handwriting of girls.

You have to remember this fact: "Not to compare between your male and female children" and do not ask them to get the same result.

Furthermore, individual differences is natural and you have to respect that.

Before you would train your child for reading and writing, it is better to train him for enough period to make it able to read and write.

So, it is possible to promote its manual skills by encouraging it to hold little toys and arrange or classify them in groups; and colored cubes are very useful for this purpose.

You may also encourage it to control the pencil while drawing to help it draw straight and curved lines as well as circles and triangles without using a ruler.

You may also strengthen its perception by training it on detecting differences and distinguishing different pieces by bringing six cups with the same shape except one and ask it to detect the different cup.

It is better to practise these exercises as games and reward a child when it answers correctly.

You may also improve articulation by teaching it some simple chants provided that classical Arabic is used not slang.

You may also enrich its language by showing it different kinds of vegetables, fruits, animals, and transportation, teach it names orally and ask it to repeat it, and use big colored pictures for this purpose.

Reading stories for children is very useful in this stage provided that reading should be peacefully, discuss your child in the content of the story, help it to understand its classical style, and give it the chance to hold the book and see the pictures because this strengthens the connection between it and the book in general.

In all your trainings, you should observe certain matters: A child in its early years suffers farsightedness and it sees big not small things, therefore keep away of small shapes and pictures of many details and use big and clear pictures of bright colors.

A child needs to see your skill when uttering the name of things, so do not pronounce words as you usually pronounce but you have to slow down your speed and concentrate on points of articulation so as your child could distinguish letters and its articulation properly.

Keep away as much as possible from common linguistic errors prevailing in slang such as pronouncing "Dad" as "Zha'" as the people of KSA and Iraq do, to pronounce "Qaf" as "Alif" as it is done in Egypt and the Levant, or not to pronounce "gim" as "jeem". If you are a resident in one of the foreign countries, you have to train your children for correct pronunciation of letters, such as: "Kha'," "Ha'," "Dad," and "Qaf". You have to help your child to distinguish between "Ha" and "Ha'," "Sin" and "Sad," "Dal" and "Dad," and "Tha" and "Sin".

Know that these errors will not come up with its bad results except when you train it for dictation.

Try to be encouraging and funny during training and do not isolate reading and writing from daily life, but find integration between learning these skills and the rest of activities.