There are a variety of ways to begin teaching your children to read. 

I have used the book Teach Your Child to Read in a 100 Easy Lessons successfully with six of our seven children (our oldest went our parish school for Kindergarten but that is another story). I really love that it is scripted.  In other words, it tells me  exactly what to say and what I should ask the child to repeat.

However, this is not the only way to teach reading, some moms and/or children respond better to a different presentation.  Over the 25+ years of coaching homeschool parents I have been very pleased with another scripted program, one I wish I had when my children were little, All About Reading Pre-1.

I also highly recommend the Little Angel Reader Phonics Program, as this lovely program has the added bonus of being a Catholic program with accompanying readers and workbooks which reinforce and teach basic phonics.

In addition, I loved using the series, Explode the Code, for its beginner lessons and especially for targeted reinforcements of concepts the child needed extra help with.

All of these programs introduce your child to the concept that symbols represent sounds, and when the symbols are placed next to each other and blended, the new, blended sound forms a word.

Move at Your Child’s Pace

The entire process of teaching reading varies in time and method, and can be individualized for each child in your family.

My best recommendation is to watch for reading readiness in your little child. When you begin to see your child follow along with you while you are reading aloud to them, and you see them begin to make out the sounds, either by themselves or in imitation of you, it is a good sign they are ready. 

Please remember though to move at your child’s pace. Try to keep these sessions short (15 minutes a day, three times a week), fun, pleasant and full of praise.  A sure sign of moving too fast is when they get easily agitated or downright resistant to these sessions.  That’s when it is a good time to close the book and move back to reading aloud, cuddled up next to mommy or daddy. 

All of my children have learned to read at a variety of ages, some as early as five years old, and some closer to nine years old.  But all of them, I am most happy to report, by having had the luxury of moving at their natural pace, now have a true love of reading.

After all, having a true love of reading and a real sense of reading success is a gift of lifetime of learning! 

Poetry as a Necessary Foundation

I feel strongly that an introduction to poetry and drama in these early childhood years are necessary foundations in the development of language skills.

For poetry and easy way to start are the poems of Robert Louis Stevenson as the language is lovely and the subject matter is appropriate for this young age. There are so many delightful ones to choose from like this one:

Bed in Summer

In Winter I get up at night
And dress by yellow candle light.
In Summer, quite the other way,
I have to go to bed by day.
I have to go to bed and see
The birds still hopping on the tree,
Or hear the grown-up people’s feet
Still going past me in the street.
And does it not seem hard to you,
When all the sky is clear and blue,
And I should like so much to play,
To have to go to bed by day?

It is valuable to keep these learning sessions short, avoiding too much repetition of lines of verse, as too much can actually be a hindrance to memory.  Children at this young age delight in memory work and do so with such skill that amazes adults, who most often have lost this innate ability. 

Remember we are building up their storehouse of rich language that will help facilitate their writing skills further down the road. Poetry involves sophisticated language patterns that, once learned through memory, create a highway to higher thinking. 

You can definitely make these memorization sessions fun and encourage your child to put in a bit of drama into each recitation, as expression through drama is another valuable skill that helps creativity. 

My children delighted in pasting a copy of each learned poem into a blank book and then illustrated the accompanying page or two. This gave our children a real sense of accomplishment and mastery and provided us with a treasured keepsake. In fact, now as a grandma, I showed these keepsakes to their parents! So fun!

Oh yes, it is also a great boon to include a review of previously learned poems to keep them fresh in your child’s minds throughout the year.

Now Let’s Talk Drama.

For these young ones it is fun and easy to have the perform a dramatization of any of the classic Aesop’s fables.  One of my all time favorites is the Milo Winter’s version of Aesop’s Fables for Children, (the “Read and Listen” edition).  The illustrations are beautiful and the retellings are well done with rich language and descriptive vocabulary.

Simply have your child look over the pictures in the book, and have them pick out one of the fables, as there is no need to do them in any particular order.  The stories are short enough for your child to be able to recall enough information to put on a mini play. 

Even better, try to enlist other family members into the performance, letting the children lead but offer help. You can practice your performances to show family or friends, once you have a few stories under your belts. Our children also loved doing plays of the classic Mother Goose rhymes, which can be substituted for the Aesop Fables any time.

What about Handwriting?

A word about handwriting, I never opted to use the handwriting portion of the book Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons because this involves another skill altogether, fine motor skills.  I found that not all children are ready at this stage of development to write while they are just trying to concentrate on the beginning skills of reading. 

Instead I would encourage you to have on hand lacing cards, puzzles, or make letters in sand frames or any number of prewriting games to prep your child ready for the skill of handwriting. 

I will say though that I also loved the series Writing Can Help as this particular Catholic mom and author, Marie Picard,  introduces handwriting in doable gentle lessons beginning with forming letters at the large easy to start with 1 inch size and as your child progresses throughout the series they learn to write in both manuscript and cursive naturally and often use words from Scripture and prayers to do so.

All in all, I do hope you remember that moving at your child’s pace will pay HUGE dividends to ensuring reading success and a natural love of reading that will last a lifetime.

Now it’s your turn, share with us your process for teaching reading to your children. What are your wins, struggles and shares? Comment below…