Perhaps it's a matter of nerves. If children are having difficulty with reading, they may feel frustrated, which adds to the pressure they feel at school. And like many adults, some children can't function at their best when they are stressed.
Your child may have a learning disability, however. SFK Media Specially For Kids Corp., a company that provides educational products for children, says parents should watch for the following early warning signs:
* difficulty learning the connections between letters and sounds;
* difficulty sounding out unknown words;
* repeatedly misidentifying words;
* making consistent reading and spelling errors, including letter reversal, inversions and transpositions;
* transposing number sequences and confusing arithmetic signs;
* difficulty understanding or remembering what is read.
If your child doesn't seem to be able to overcome his or her reading difficulties, using fun, supplemental teaching materials at home can help.
SFK Media offers an innovative learning tool called ReadEnt. ReadEnt seamlessly blends reading with entertaining movies that teach and improve reading, vocabulary and comprehension by using a patented technology called "Action Captions." This technology shows each spoken word on screen, one at a time, as the character speaks it.
"This remarkable technology activates the cognitive elements of the brain so that the development of both reading and spoken language skills take place naturally for children, kindergarten through eighth grade," said reading specialist Bernabe Feria, who holds a doctorate from Oxford University.
These reading movies are available as interactive DVD programs for use on the TV or computer and include such classic titles as "20,000 Leagues Under the Sea," "Tales of Gulliver's Travels" and "The Trojan Horse." They also come with interactive quizzes and games to make the learning experience even more enjoyable and less stressful for children learning to read.
