can anyone recommend any help with reading games, either on-line or pc based, for a 6yr old? he’s getting bored with the school books and not progressing that rapidly, i figure something he can do on the computer that is fun may spur him along. anyone?

Have you tried non-fiction books, rather than school-type reading books? Might be more interesting – is he into dinosaurs or anything? Publishers’ Book Clearance shops often have nice kiddie books.

My six year old’s liked Captain Underpants, and my read the Harry Potter series as they came out. Youngest boy(was 7 at the end of April) is well into the BeastQuest series. Comics helped a lot too, as did Roald Dahl stories. Joke books/sites are good too, but you need to vet them for filth first.

Has your school got their ENABLE computer based study up and running? It’s pretty much what you’re describing, and is (or should be) based around the school’s existing IT programs.

Before embarking on this sort of thing though, please do talk to your school.

My daughter (nearly 6) likes books about ballerinas and fairies; how I love bedtime stories. Recently got her into Roald Dahl, which is much better, but she’s read most of them now.

My lad was the same – bored stiff by the (very tedious vocab based) books at school, but as soon as he got onto anything he was interested in he was away. Kids (especially boys) don’t seem to learn the way teachers want them to in these prescriptive days. Don’t worry about it.

I did have a Mr Man reading thing for the PC but it was ages ago (designed for Key Stage 1 though), dunno if you can still get it. Must be something similar around.

Oh and keep reading books to/with him – the more he enjoys that the more he’ll want to read.

nickc must be a teacher so take his advice

you may create problems by being a “pushy” parent(no offence meant btw)in that if your child gets too far ahead of the others in his class he will become even more bored.

Teachers used to allow my daughter to sleep in class because she was an avid reader and had next to nothing to do in some classes.

She is now about to embark on a teaching career!!

She herself is having problems getting her son, 3.1/2 to write due to him not knowing whether he is a leftie or not.

My six-year-old LOVES dinosaurs so I read Dinosaur Cove books to him.
For books that he reads, I let him choose at the library or the book store. He tends to pick ones he likes to read.
And reading to him every night seems to have instilled a love of reading.
He doesn’t do any computer-based reading, but when he goes to the Lego website or whatever, I get him to read random words.
You could also get your son to read the editor’s column in Singletrack — Chipps uses pretty small words.
🙂

Point him in the direction of some bike forums,some very childish writeing on there.
Hell also learn some new words as well.

Point him in the direction of some bike forums

that encouragement he does not need, he’s already got a 2 bike quiver (isla bein and bmx micro race bike) and when i can find a decent priced used 16″ bmx (so he can ride in the skatepark) it’ll be up to 3 – and yes, the wife does’nt understand why he needs more than one bike!

thanks all for the advice, something for me to mull over.

Wordshark was recommended for my daughter when younger to help her with spelling etc. Seemed to do the trick helping her to remember spellings etc through using computer games http://www.wordshark.co.uk/

Chair of Governors actually. Encourage your son to read all he can. The teachers will be right behind you, and they have access to a whole range of stuff that’ll actually sync in with what he’s doing, as well as being fun.