Teaching Your Child To Read

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I have been asked recently at what age I began teaching my children to read. That question began a discussion over the entire topic that seems to strike fear in the hearts of many potential homeschool moms. How do I do it? What if I fail?! Won’t I be ruining them for the rest of their lives??!! While a daunting prospect when seen as a whole, teaching your child to read is completely doable when broken down into steps.

First Things First

I guess the first thing I do to help my children to learn is to read to them from a very young age. This topic is addressed in another blog post. While this does not actually teach them their letters and their sounds, it grows in most children a love of books and a desire to learn.

Preschool: Beginning to Enjoy Letters

My formal instruction in reading begins when my child is around 4 years old. I call this the preschool phase and start a little bit of “school” in an effort to teach them to recognize the letters and numbers, begin to learn their sounds, and also start to know how to write the letters and numbers. When I first started to homeschool my children, I found the following website: https://www.letteroftheweek.com/. This website has free preschool curriculum that I find to be very helpful. I would recommend that anyone in that stage of life read through this website and decide how much to use from it. I still use parts of this website with my preschoolers to this day.

The main thing that I follow from it is the book lists for each letter. I go to my local library website and search for the recommended books, put them on hold, and go pick them up. I have found that it works best for me to do this on a two week cycle, mainly because I don’t necessarily make it to the library every week!! If you do not have a good library network close to you, it may be harder to do this. You probably could find the books for sale online (new or used), but obviously then it is no longer free!!

Once I have the books, I let the child choose one of them a day that we read aloud together. While doing that I will tell them what the letter sounds like and point out the letter in the book and sound it out slowly for them. As the week progresses, I might also let them see if they can find the letter on the page or ask them what the letter “says”. At some point I also get out a piece of lined paper (with the big spaced lines) and write the capital and lower case letter and have them try to write it. After I have gone through all the letters, I do the same thing with numbers 1-10.

Keep if Fun!

At this stage I intentionally keep the training low-key. I do not expect them to learn all the letters, their sounds, and how to write them perfectly. They will learn it in more detail later. This is not the time to be demanding and stressful. I want my child to enjoy books and to enjoy learning. I have seen well-intentioned homeschool moms who were so excited to be homeschooling that they started their children at a really young age and immediately began a full schedule with very involved curriculum. This took a lot of time and energy and put a lot of pressure on the child. It was too much for the young child! While he might have started off with his mother’s enthusiasm, he quickly got overwhelmed and started to hate school- all by the time I would be starting mine in kindergarten!!!

Kindergarten Curriculum Overview

It takes approximately a year to go through this preschool time (which it is more than a week per letter!). Then, when my child is around five years old, I start an even more structured homeschooling with the Abeka phonics program. I use their K5 Numbers, as well. Abeka does an excellent job teaching them their phonics, and it is all very well laid out in the teacher manual. Although they have more subjects and activities for this grade level, I stick with the Letters and Sounds, Writing with Phonics, and Number Skills student books plus the readers. At this age, I feel these basic topics should be the focus; just do the 3 R’s: Reading, ‘Riting, and ‘Rithmetic!!

Cursive vs Manuscript

On a side note, Abeka recommends teaching your kindergartener to write cursive right off the bat in kindergarten. Although this idea has been around for awhile, this is a new recommendation compared to when I first started teaching my kids. The first time I found out about this recommendation I was at one of Abeka’s homeschool displays, and they were playing the kindergarten video, teaching the kids to write in cursive. I couldn’t believe it; it just didn’t seem right to me. Then I went to fill out my order form for books I was ordering at the time. At the top of the order form, it said “Please print”. I thought this was ironic, because, I thought if everyone taught their children only cursive, eventually no one would be able to fill out their form! I remain old school in the sense that I want them to learn to print (aka Manuscript) before they learn cursive. Thankfully, Abeka does still offer the manuscript option for the writing papers at least through first grade. So, I have my children work on their printing from preschool through approximately second or third grade, depending how well they are doing. Then I teach them cursive.

The Abeka phonics program does an excellent job helping the mom feel confident in her new position as teacher. It gives you all the tools to be successful. Better yet, it breaks it down into small doable chunks that don’t seem that difficult. It is hard to believe that all those individual lessons end with the result of a reading child! And it really only takes at the most an hour or two a day!!! What a joy to see your child enjoying reading and grabbing a good book to curl up on the couch with!!! What a great start to a homeschooling career!

Teaching to Your Child’s Uniqueness

It is important to note that each of our children are different! My children all learned different subjects at different rates, depending on their interests and abilities. I did have one of my sons skip the preschool phase and start kindergarten at age four, because he had sat in on his older brother’s kindergarten classes and had already learned to read! On the other end of the scale, I have one or two children that struggled more with reading until they were into their second grade year or so. In several cases, those who struggled more in reading did better in math and vice versa. One of the benefits of homeschooling is that you, the parent, are in charge, and you can adapt each individual child’s curriculum and learning to address their strengths and weaknesses. I have made a lot of changes over the years as I saw specific needs in one child or another.

I know there are many other options for preschool and kindergarten material out there. I also know there are many different views on how to go about it. This is just the way I chosen to do it, and I have now seen success seven times with this method!!!! Feel free to comment at the end of this article and share things you have learned in your family’s homeschooling adventure. Or do you have a question or another topic you would like to see on this blog? Let me know.