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Areas › Focus, starting, and ADHD › Reading, numbers and learning differences
Play the games, and separately get the structured teaching that a child with a real decoding problem needs. Families are often told that rhyming matters, do plenty of it, and are then baffled that reading has not moved, which costs a year and leaves everyone discouraged. Both things can be true at once: genuinely helpful, and not enough by itself.
God wants ease for you, not hardship (Quran 2:185). Some of what helps a child can be light and enjoyable, even while the harder work carries on beside it.
البقرة
شَهۡرُ رَمَضَانَ ٱلَّذِيٓ أُنزِلَ فِيهِ ٱلۡقُرۡءَانُ هُدࣰ ى لِّلنَّاسِ وَبَيِّنَٰتࣲ مِّنَ ٱلۡهُدَىٰ وَٱلۡفُرۡقَانِۚ فَمَن شَهِدَ مِنكُمُ ٱلشَّهۡرَ فَلۡيَصُمۡهُۖ وَمَن كَانَ مَرِيضًا أَوۡ عَلَىٰ سَفَرࣲ فَعِدَّةࣱ مِّنۡ أَيَّامٍ أُخَرَۗ يُرِيدُ ٱللَّهُ بِكُمُ ٱلۡيُسۡرَ وَلَا يُرِيدُ بِكُمُ ٱلۡعُسۡرَ وَلِتُكۡمِلُواْ ٱلۡعِدَّةَ وَلِتُكَبِّرُواْ ٱللَّهَ عَلَىٰ مَا هَدَىٰكُمۡ وَلَعَلَّكُمۡ تَشۡكُرُونَ
It was in the month of Ramadan that the Quran was revealed as guidance for mankind, clear messages giving guidance and distinguishing between right and wrong. So any one of you who is present that month should fast, and anyone who is ill or on a journey should make up for the lost days by fasting on other days later. God wants ease for you, not hardship. He wants you to complete the prescribed period and to glorify Him for having guided you, so that you may be thankful
Qur’an 2:185read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
In a randomised trial, rhythm based music training raised phonological awareness and improved certain reading skills in children with dyslexia. The sample was small and the gains were on particular subskills, so it supports playful sound and rhythm work as a real contribution rather than as a treatment in itself. That is roughly the honest claim for rhyming games too.
Flaugnacco E, Lopez L, Terribili C, Montico M, Zoia S, Schön D. (2015). Music Training Increases Phonological Awareness and Reading Skills in Developmental Dyslexia: A Randomized Control Trial.. PloS one doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
Rhymes give the ear practice with the sounds inside words, which is a start rather than the whole job.
If reading has not moved after a term of games and goodwill, that is the point to seek a proper assessment rather than to try harder at home.
In most children attention and memory sit at roughly the same level. When memory is far ahead of everything around it, ask what it has been quietly making up for.
When the usual route into reading or arithmetic does not form, children build another one, and it nearly always runs through memory. It works for years, and it costs far more effort than anyone watching realises.
A child who cannot bear the noise, the lights and the scratchy jumper all day will be hard to be around by the afternoon. That child usually gets described as badly behaved rather than as overwhelmed.