Teaching Reading

I do not enjoy teaching my children to read. It is a tedious process fraught with frustration on the child's part no matter how sweetly I present it. It is hard work for all of us. My relationship with Christ and the Catholic spiritual practices I participate in allow me to be open to the graces to be more patient, more encouraging, and more loving in the heart of a sometimes difficult task.

Both my husband and I have a love of books and have many books available for the children, even as babies. All of our children were fascinated with books as toddlers because of the children's books they were given free access to. It's not the amount that counts, but the free access and seeing books as a priority by the people around you.

Each of my children have learned to read on my lap with a lot of encouragement and positive reinforcement. Some of the children's learning style dictated continuation of the reading lessons with hands-on games and activities.

The youngest two, who are still in the process of learning to read, began the process on their own, accidentally. It was the end of the school year, and I felt pressured to finish our books before we ended for the summer. Hoping for some uninterrupted time with the older children, I plopped the younger two in front of the TV with a learning video every day for two weeks. At the conclusion of school and the start of summer break, I turned my attention to my 5 year old asking for his help cutting out letters to teach him the names and sounds of them. He patiently informed me that he already knew them. I knew I hadn't taught him and last month he didn't know them. He insisted he was right. To prove to him that he needed to let me teach him, I held up letter after letter out of order. He knew 18 sounds out of 26 and some of the names. I tested the 3 year old and had a similar experience. After watching Leap Frog's Letter Factory, they had begun the process without me at ages 5 and 3. Now, at 6 and 4 they are both about half-way through the year to 2 year process of learning to read well, with the 4 year demanding to get his "reading time, too!"

Our children are exposed to read alouds and books at an early age. They are free to begin the process when ever they ask to learn to read. Two of our children have done that in preschool. If they haven't learned before, formal reading lessons begin in 1st grade with the materials we have in our school (homemade Montessori materials, Little Stories for Little Folks, Sing Spell Read & Write readers and games - I would NOT advise anyone to buy this new, and Abeka early readers) on Mom's lap on the couch. We continue practicing one skill, for example sounding out letters to make words, until they have pretty much accomplished it switching to other readers at the same level as needed for practice. Once they have, relatively, mastered a skill, we move on to the next level, for example vowel variations, moving among the various readers until they have enough practice to become competent in that skill. Depending on the child, it can take 1-2 years to completely work through the process and they are reading securely on a second grade level. I do not introduce spelling or language arts until they are reading securely on a second grade level.