March 2010 Edition | Heart of the Matter

February 28, 2010 By AmyStults 7 Comments

International Children’s Digital Library
The search options for this website are incredible. You can search by age, language, subject, length, awards won, type of character, emotions, and much more. Most of the books are full color.

Children’s Books Online
I love this delightful site because you can search by reading level. Most of the books are full color and some include audios.

The Baldwin Online Children’s Literature Project
Popular children’s literature, organized into 19 genres, including biographies, history, and science.

Librivox
An impressive list of over 1800 audio books recorded and submitted by volunteers

Page by Page Books
Classic books arranged by title

World Wide School
Search by by subject, author, or title

Internet Archive: Children’s Library
Browse by title, author, staff recommendations, most downloaded, or cloud tags. Most books are available to download in pdf format or to view online in flipbook.

Planet eBook
Classic books arranged by title

Author’s Classic Novels
Popular children’s stories

Classics for Young People
Classic books arranged by author

Amy is a devoted wife to her husband of 11 years, a Classical homeschooling mom to a seven-year-old Superhero and the co-founder of Heart of the Matter and A Woman Inspired Ministries. She has a passion for genealogy and is aspiring to be a Proverbs 31 lady. Be sure to visit her blog at Milk and Cookies.

February 28, 2010 By Jimmie 3 Comments

One of the many positives of reading aloud is that you can expose your children to books that they would have difficulty understanding if read independently. Until about eighth grade, children can listen and understand at a higher reading level than they can read. Often these advanced books have new vocabulary that your children (or even you) don’t understand.

So, how should you handle those new words when reading aloud?

read aloud vocabulary

You may be tempted to stop mid-stream in your reading and explain each and every new word. It may be counter-intuitive, but stopping to discuss each new word will dramatically decrease the comprehension of the story. When a story is chopped up into bits and continually analyzed, the flow of the story is destroyed, and it’s hard to regain it when you resume reading.

This quote by Esme Raji Codell in How to Get Your Child to Love Reading explains yet another downside to studying each and every new vocabulary word, “Don’t overevaluate. The more you formally test and check, the more you kill the affective gain.”

Put plainly, over analysis kills the joy.

More than likely, a new word in each paragraph will not greatly impede your child’s overall comprehension. The context clues help the child have a general grasp of the meaning.

Here are some Dos for dealing with vocabulary words in read alouds

Do make a note of new words or hard passages to return to.
Do postpone most vocabulary discussion to the end of the passage or chapter.
Do stop the story to explain a new word if it is pivotal to the action and/or is repeated multiple times in the chapter.
Do answer your child’s questions about a new word.

Once you’ve completed reading your passage, you can stop and discuss a few select vocabulary words.

Read the word in context again, and encourage your children to make an educated guess as to the meaning.
Use a dictionary to verify the correct meanings if you’re not absolutely sure. (Here you can sneak in some dictionary skills.)
Do reread the entire sentence or even paragraph with the new word after you’ve defined it.

Overall, you want the study of new vocabulary words to be an interesting complement to reading outloud. Don’t make it a drudgery of defining long lists of words. Instead, make it fun! Choose just a few of the most interesting words to study. And then try to incorporate the new vocabulary words into your lives somehow. How about using a book of index cards to make your own Word of the Day Calendar? See how many times you can appropriately use the word that day. My daughter and I added the words tatterdemalion and hoyden to our vocabularies using this method. I can tell you that we will both never forget these vocabulary words or the books we learned them from (The Sword in the Tree & The Voyage of Patience Goodspeed, in case you’re wondering).

What are your favorite vocabulary words learned from reading aloud? Do you have any unique ways to handle new words in your books?

Jimmie is a former public school teacher turned homeschooling stay-at-home-mom. A sense of humor, faith, and creativity keep her “pressing on” in her unique situation — living and traveling abroad with an only child in a bilingual environment. Visit her blog at Jimmie’s Collage.

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February 28, 2010 By Debbie 1 Comment

A big reason that homeschoolers do so well academically is reading. For one, they have more time to read since they do not spend hours on school buses and classroom busywork. And for another, they read real books, not the committee written textbooks.

Real Books. A real book is written by a real person with passion for his subject. Some of that passion and interest communicates to a child reading the book. He reads with high interest, forms images in his mind, agrees or disagrees. In general, his mind is working and growing as the author communicates with him.

In real books, children can read a biography in which a man is such a hero he does nothing wrong. Then he could read another biography that tells some faults and mistakes in the man’s life. With that, the child learns to think. He has more stories and interesting information to think about.

Textbooks. By contrast, a textbook is a non-book. The content is chosen by committees, possibly a range of committees in teachers’ organizations. Then after a text is planned or even written, various pressure groups push for their ideologies: “You can’t say that; it sounds like creationism.” “You need some homosexual people in the stories.” And so on. All views are pre-selected. Students are supposed to come out believing what the committees want them to believe.

Some homeschoolers like to look at textbooks to use for what they call a “spine.” They see, for instance, that a textbook covers the westward movement in U.S. history. And they see that this includes information about Indians, farming, gold mining, pony express, and other topics. Then they can find real books on those topics. Sometimes they read the textbook afterward, to provide a quick summary of the topics.

Learning to Read. Probably the most scary part for first time homeschoolers is teaching children how to read. Some people buy an expensive phonics kit with games and bells and whistles, and then spend years trying to get their money’s worth from it. Others find their children learn to read while they read picture books to them, teaching letter sounds from the books now and then in haphazard order.

Almost anything works when the time is right. A good average age for boys to begin reading is 7½. Girls about a year earlier. If you’re trying and trying to teach your child to read and not getting anywhere, maybe it’s too early. It would be better to wait awhile rather than to frustrate the child and make him feel like a failure. Also, it is better to wait because the too-early start wastes time. Children could use that time to learn from real life and from you reading to him. He grows a wider vocabulary than he would while drilling on phonics sounds and rules. This increased knowledge and vocabulary help his later reading more than early phonics does.

Some children have physical or neurological problems that interfere with reading. Their eyes may not track together and focus as they should. They may be cross-dominant, as right-handed but left-eyed. If a child is not reading by age eight you should try to find what his problem is and treat it if possible.

Enjoy Stories. If a child sits and reads for a time, maybe chuckling now and then, you know he is getting meaning from the book. So you don’t need to test him by asking questions. Especially don’t ask the “literature” kinds of questions found in some lessons. (Who is the protagonist? How did the antagonist trouble him? What is the climax of the story?) That kind of analyzing is for writers or for college courses on writing. But it has been pushed down to the early grades and it spoils stories for children.

Let the children enjoy mentally living in the stories they read. That’s what stories are for. Talk naturally about them sometimes—about what happened, what people did, what you think you would have done, and so on. No literary analysis.

Better than TV. Time spent reading is far better than time spent watching TV. The fast pace of cartoons and other features scrambles the brain’s mode of thinking. Commercials and other features flash by rapidly, and that trains children to have short attention spans. TV mixes music and wild sound effects with the talking, and that misteaches concentration. Since children cannot listen to the three things at once, they tend to turn off concentration and genuine thinking and just let the mixture of sounds surf across their brain.

Some TV images are scary. In a book you can read that the lion roared and the child makes his own mental image, one he can handle. But a full-screen lion head roaring may give him nightmares.

The Major Academic Skill. Colleges these days are happy to get homeschool students because they can read and think, and they are motivated to learn. Through reading, students can learn about the world past and the world present, even about the world future from the Bible and theological writings. They can learn about science far beyond what experiments they have time to do. The learn information about anything and everything by reading.

Students not only learn information, but they gain skill with language through reading. They broaden their vocabulary. They see good and elegant sentences that professionals write. They see beautiful descriptions and strong arguments. Reading provides models for students’ own thinking and writing.

Reading is why homeschoolers excel academically.

Debbie Strayer is a veteran educator, speaker, author and home educator. She enjoys spending time with her husband of thirty years and her grown children.

Dr. Ruth Beechick, too, has spent many years teaching and writing on education. She specializes in curriculum and in how children learn. She is mother of two and grandmother of four and loves working together with Debbie because they think alike on education matters. For more books and articles, see debbiestrayer.com.

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February 28, 2010 By Cassie Leave a Comment

There are so many things I want my children to learn before they are grown and out from under my wing. I want them to gain an understanding of God’s Word and develop a close relationship with Him. I want them to see God’s grace and provision throughout history and explore God’s beautiful and amazing world through science. I want them to experience great books and see history through the eyes of the people who experienced it.

In order to get all this richness from their education, there is one skill they cannot do without…

READING!

There are times in the past 5 years of my homeschooling journey I have wondered why it is that we are not just born with the ability to read the written word. For some of us, it comes easily. Translating all the letters and their combinations into sounds to make words is like second nature. My oldest son learned to read rather quickly, though he did not enjoy the process as much as I hoped he would. He is now almost ten, and starting to show signs of enjoying reading.

As for my younger son, reading was an uphill battle from the beginning.

I am a reader. I always have at least one book I am reading, most of the time I am reading two or three. I read a wide variety of books and I find that I go through “seasons” in the types of books that hold my interest. The one thing I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt from the beginning of our homeschooling journey was that I wanted my kids to love to read! If you enjoy reading, there is nothing that you can’t learn or experience through another’s eyes. The world is your oyster!

Unfortunately, my initial experiences in sharing my love of reading with my boys were less than encouraging.

I had so many questions that seemed to have no answers. Why isn’t my son getting it? Why doesn’t he like for me to read to him? Why doesn’t he want to learn to read? Is there something wrong with the curriculum? Is there something wrong with my approach? Is there something wrong with my son!? I have since learned that there are many parents that have struggled with those same questions. I am not alone, and if my experience sounds familiar to you in the least, neither are you!

I decided that since no one else was able to answer these questions for me, it was time for some trial and error. I started out using the same materials with my younger son as I had used with my oldest. When I initially realized he wasn’t learning or retaining anything we had covered, my first response was to try a different curriculum. We tried at least four different phonics and reading programs in two years. He didn’t seem to “get it” with any of them. It was when we were struggling through that fourth program that I came across an article about late readers. This was the first time I had heard or read about other kids not reading until they were 6, 7, 8, or even 9 years old! And what was even more encouraging was the author was telling me these kids were not abnormal or “special-needs”, they were simply not ready to read! Even still, when these children finally did learn to read, they learned quickly and advanced to their appropriate reading levels in a very short time!

After doing a bit more research and finding more to support this “better late than early” philosophy, I decided to relax. I planned to review what he had learned up to that point, take opportunities to read to him, and wait for him to show me some sign that he was ready to try reading again. We spent our time together playing games with letters and their sounds and reading appealing books such as those by Dr. Suess and fun poems by Shel Silverstein. Looking back, the time we spent away from workbooks and phonics lessons was enjoyed by both of us.

About a year ago, around his 7th birthday, he started showing me signs that he wanted to read. He would ask his older brother to read him picture books. When we were out running errands or shopping, he started to ask what this said and that said. SO I dug out that very first curriculum (mostly because it was the most familiar and comfortable for me), ordered a new set of workbooks, and we started over again.

Photo Credit: Heidi, Mt Hope Academy

My son is now eight. We are still doing a first grade phonics and reading curriculum, but he is no longer struggling. He is reading! He likes to read.

Phonics and reading are his favorite lessons of the school day and he enjoys reading Bob Books and easy readers from the library. If he continues at the rate he is going now, he will be at level by the end of next year (this is where I breathe a huge sigh of relief). But this is not the main reason I am sharing my experience with you. There is one major nugget of wisdom I have learned through our trials and triumphs (and yes, failures too) that I really want to share with you.

I firmly believe that had I not decided to take a step back and relax, if I had not decided to stop pushing him, that he would still be that kid who didn’t care if he EVER read a book on his own.

But instead, I see him smiling when he reads a story to a sibling or his father. He is proud to be a reader. And that makes me smile, too. If you have a child that is not yet reading at five or six (or even 7, 8, or 9) do not despair. Enjoy the time you have with them. Read to them every chance you get. Let them observe their siblings (and you) enjoying books. They will get to the point of readiness in their own time. And when that happens, you will be so glad that you waited! I know I am.

Cassandra Simpson is a homeschooling wife and mother of four children, ages 1, 8, 9, and 12. She is starting her 6th year of home educating in Indiana and uses a “Classically Eclectic” teaching approach. Cassandra is the Assistant Lead Moderator for HOTM’s forum and loves talking homeschool with anyone who will listen! Her hobbies are reading, blogging, sewing, and cooking. You can check out her family’s blog at In His Image.

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February 28, 2010 By HeatherL 3 Comments

How we all yearn to give our child a heads up when it comes to reading. Our desire is not only to teach the mechanics of reading but the love of reading. The joy in the written word. How can you do that when your toddler or preschooler seem to only want to eat the books you give them?

Photo Credit: Melissa, A Familiar Path

Happily you have most likely started down the path to literacy all ready! Do you snuggle and read a book for bedtime or at nap time? Reading to your child in the number one best thing you can do to help them learn to read. You teach that reading is a wonderful, warm sharing time. You teach the rhythm of the language by reading out loud. You teach reading comprehension by reading silly stories that encourage your young one to listen closely. You teach that you find reading so important that you take the time out of your day to share. Reading out loud is your first tool to help teach your child to read.

This one is just as easy. Read in front of your child. The simple fact you are reading makes it part of life. To a child that makes reading just one more thing all adults do. So they are going to imitate you. They also watch what you read. One of my kids pleasantly surprised me recently. I had my morning coffee in one hand and I was settling down at the kitchen table. She brought me my Bible and said, “because I knew you would need it.” I was thrilled and a little intimidated that the kids watch what I do so closely. Reading in front of your children is also an important tool to use!

The next helpful thing to do with your child is simple alphabet exercises, singing the alphabet, writing it (usually one letter at a time), and working on what sound the letters make. You can get a preschool workbook to help with this or just get a paper and pencil. These early lessons should be no more than twenty minutes. It seems short but your child’s attention span is short. Keep it short and sweet!

Reading is also all about hearing the sounds of the alphabet. This is called phonemic awareness. That just means your child can match the letter to the sound. Also the series of sounds can be put together to make a word. This is something that grows as your child begins learning to read. Just like any muscle it needs to be exercised. You can start before they can read their first letter exercising their awareness by singing! Yes, I did say singing. Sing songs that have rhyming. Silly songs like the Veggie Tales are good for this. Books and poems can also help your child. Rhyming helps them to begin sounding out words based on their first and last sounds. Teaching them to separate and listen to parts of words. This is a really valuable tool to work on when a child is having some difficulties.

If you feel there is a problem with your child’s learning talk with your pediatrician. Check that there are no organic problems such as needing glasses. If that is not the problem and you are still concerned look into a reading specialist. Have your child tested and get a written report on the results. Based on the results you can tailor any extra help needed.

Learning to read is a big milestone! It’s exciting not scary. You are already helping your child. Think back to the first days holding a tiny baby in your arms and you sang a gentle song. You began teaching them to read then. Together in small lessons you can teach your child to read. Don’t rush when your child can piece the letters, sounds, and put it all back together to read they will. Reading can come as late as 8 or 10 for some children and as early as 4 for others. Rest assured the magically moment will come when your child bounces in their seat having read their first words!

Heather Laurie and her husband, Christopher, have been married for 13 wonderful years, and have been blessed with 7 children, two of whom are awaiting them in Heaven. They began their homeschooling journey eight years ago, amidst trials and unexpected journeys, including genetic disorders, austism, sensory disorders, and lupus. Heather and her husband created the ministry Special Needs Homeschooling as a way to use their trials for the Lord’s glory and to encourage special needs parents and homeschoolers.

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February 28, 2010 By AmyF 4 Comments

Recently I sat down with my son and we talked about his reading habits. He has really started picking some books that are way below his reading level. Next year he will be a high school student and for whatever the reason, this fact has just registered with me. Here are a few things that I learned from this discussion.

When he was younger, he enjoyed reading more because of the illustrations. This was a huge winning factor in a book for him, even to this day. Nothing completes a story better than great pictures that complement the book he is reading.

It is hard to believe that it was that long ago, when he was that small child sitting on my lap, enjoying such authors as Maurice Sendak, Jez Alborough and Watty Piper. I still can hear the words of the great classics that we read together and envision the pictures also. My son reminded me of his favorite read aloud books and here are just a few he recommends:

The Little Engine that Could by Watty Piper
Where is my Teddy Bear? By Jez Alborough
Love You Forever by Robert Munsch
Where the Wild Things Are by Maurice Sendak
I Just Forgot by Mercer Mayer

I believe the next stage was where he lost his love of reading.

It was harder for him to comprehend the stories that lacked those pictures he loved so much. When it came to his reading level, he was dead on. It was the comprehension that he had problems with when reading. He would start a book and by the time he was on the second page, he lost interest. This is where we had to come up with books that were on subjects he loved and also encourage him to try new subjects also. When we talked about this time in his life, he disliked reading so much, he had a hard time figuring out what kind of books he read back then. So, this list is from what I remember him reading from about first to third grade:

Captain Underpants Series by Dave Pilkey
Dinosaurs Before Dark ( and other Magic Tree House Series Books) by Mary Pope Osborne
The Big Book of Dinosaurs: A First Book for Young Children by DK Pubishing

When Fourth Grade rolled around, he says he was really excited about some of the reading he did. That was the year he discovered the many categories of science. He loved to read on inventors and their inventions, fiction that was based on where we lived and history. We lived in the Grand Staircase in Utah. This was a great place for nature walks that was often rewarded by a petroglyphs or possibly a animal sighting. He wanted to know what people and animals lived there then and in the past. The years of fourth and fifth grade book recommendations from him where huge! I asked him to narrow them down to five and he obliged me with a little bit of disappointment. Here is his list:

National Geographic Mystery Books by Gloria Skurzynski and Alane Ferguson
Eyewitness Books by DK Publishing
Artemis Fowl by Eion Colfer
The Giver by Mark Lowry
Books that gave information on native animals of the area, plants or birds

Now we come up to the age that he becomes the disgruntled teenager. It is not just because he dislikes reading many books. It has to do with the quality of the book. I would like to think this is because he is maturing. He reminds me that he always had the Bible in his reading logs for school or free reading. He just does not want any book that goes against what he believes. And he knows as he gets older that he must expand his reading list to things that may not interest him. So he is picky about what he read and very disappointed in the content. Here are a few books he would recommend:

The Lab by Jack Heath
Narnia Series by C. S. Lewis
Passages Series by Paul McCusker
Ancient Times by Susan Bauer
Journey to the Center of the Earth by Jules Verne

As mentioned above, we realized that high school would be here sooner than we thought. He showed his concern over not meeting expectations on several subject with reading being on the top of the list. I reminded him that his free reading has always been different than his assigned reading. After all, free reading is what we had been discussing the whole time. Then, I started rattling off the other books he had read, the ones I assigned to him for schooling. What was his reaction? He had a huge smile and both of us realized that he had been reading books that were over his level.

He still is not a happy camper with reading and would like to offer the following advice:

“Talk to your teenage son about his reading. Be patient with your boys and work with them to help figure out a series or subject that may interest him. Having free reads they will enjoy will help them with the books they must read for assignments. Help pick out books that will inspire them to better themselves and make a difference in this world. And lastly, if they don’t understand the story help them re-read the book or material again. I know I did not like this step, but it has made me a better reader.”

Amy Fleeker is a part of a great family that includes a husband of 12 years, 3 children, a dog and a cat. Her homeschooling style is eclectic with a emphasis on classical teaching. When with her family, you can find her watching movies, playing board games, and living life with a great sense of humor and knowing that God is all around. In her spare time she enjoys scrapbooking, tatting, crocheting and doing a little family history. You can visit Amy at her blog, Counting Change Again, or at the HOTM forum, where she is the Lead Moderator.

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February 28, 2010 By Stacey Leave a Comment

It’s no secret that in our house we like to read.

Our Family Library

We are blessed to have a library in our home – in what most people would call their formal living room. Right as your walk in our front door, you meet our friends of days gone by. Hardback, soft cover, picture-filled, reference, literary giants, epic tales, they are all there, keeping us company throughout our days. We live for library day, whether it entails picking a few gems from our own library, or going to the public library where even more adventures await us in the pages that live there. We are thrilled when we can all snuggle up on a Sunday afternoon with our books and some blankets and read the day away.

It has been that way in our family for years – in fact, it has been that way in our marriage since we met over a decade ago. So I suppose it should be no surprise to us that one of our kids’ favorite things to do is read. I must confess, I did not teach my children to read. They both went to a private school last year where they both learned to read on their own level. Emma who is in 1st grade is reading several skill levels above her peers, and Timmy who is in Kindergarten is reading at about a 1st grade level. While their teachers at school taught them the nuts and bolts of phonetical reading, I still take credit for creating an environment and lifestyle that fosters a love of reading and therefore cultivates the skill in our children.

Five Ways to Cultivate Young Readers:

1. Read. Not to them, not with them, not for them or about them. Pick up a book that interests you and read. Let them see you reading as you stir the soup, waiting at a red light, or in line at the grocery store. Let them see you toss your book in your purse for those unexpected snippets of time that you can spend reading. Develop a love of reading and you will see the fruits of that love blossom in your children. So go ahead, get the latest John Grisham novel, get a cup of tea, snuggle on the couch with a blanket and read a chapter. Then pat yourself on the back because after all, you’re doing it for the kids, taking one for the team.

2. Limit screen time for yourself and the children. Clearly, social networking media is something I think highly of. Writing for Heart of the Matter, authoring a blog, facebooking, and tweeting are all ways I stay connected with the women in my life that help me to be a better wife, mother, teacher. But let the kids see you set boundaries for yourself and their minds will connect it to their own behavior. This way you are less likely to wind up screaming, “Turn off the video game and pick up a book for goodness sake!!!!” Because, really? How is that enticing?

3. Make reading a family activity. Everyone goes to the library, everyone gets a book, everyone reads. Sometimes we lay all over each other on our sectional couch in the family room and there are 20 kids books strewn all about and Tim and I each have our book. And we just read. Nothing quite beats a good ole’ “family read”….

4. Except maybe a good ole’ “family read aloud”. Those are awesome, too. Be sure to do that. You can choose books according to age level, interest, or skill level if you want to have the kids help with the reading aloud. Or mix it up. We read aloud in a number of different ways around here. The kids read their own books to one another during the school day, and also to me while I am cooking, or folding laundry, or doing dishes. “Sit up on the counter and read to Mama, dear.” They love it! They get one on one time with me, and they get to show off their mad skills, and they get to sit on the counter! What’s not to love? We also read to them. Picture books? Yes! Some of our current favorites are Rain Makes Applesauce, Once Upon a Cloud, Blueberries for the Queen, and Roxaboxen.

We are also reading to them from a chapter book series called The Magic Treehouse. Have you heard of it? Hmmm, I thought maybe. We are keeping the end in mind as we read chapter books. It’s a learned skill, I believe, having the patience, attention span, and retentiveness for chapter books. So we are reading MTH series in preparation for some of the more heavy hitters like Anne of Green Gables, Little House, and Chronicles of Narnia. This brings me to my next tip.

5. Keeping the end in mind. Have some goals, and try to achieve them. And by this, I do not mean a goals & rewards program like pizza hut or anything like that. But if that’s what you need to get your kids reading, by all means look into those programs. Reading voraciously is wonderful, and reading everything and anything y’all can get your hands on is not to be discouraged, but perhaps we as parents can help to steer the course just a tad in helping with the book selection process. One thing that we try to do is encourage the kids to get several library books that are on their reading level and one that is 1-2 levels above their current skill level.

Timmy (kindergarten) reading The Polar Express aloud to us

This way, we can sit down with them and work through the book together, and their little brains are given a workout while they enjoy reading with mom or dad.

Here’s an idea of a specific goal: If you want your child to develop her attention span in the classroom, one great way to do this is to start reading chapter books. Our kids are too young for the Harry Potter series, but for all it’s controversy, I can tell you I see the merits in something that got kids reading for long periods of time. That was time they spent away from screens of any type, and time they spent engrossed in some well-written, fun literature. I had numerous friends tell me that after reading the series, they saw their kids’ grades improve because attention span issues were improved. So yes, reading, while excellent as a pursuit for it’s own merits, also can bring growth in other areas of our child’s life.

Stacey and her family recently relocated to Phoenix, Arizona where they enjoy hiking the many local mountains, swimming in their pool, and exploring all the family-friendly venues Phoenix has to offer. This is her first year officially homeschooling after several years of co-schooling. Curriculum changes, schedule re-vamping, and learning how to relax has been a theme around Nazareth Academy. It has been a learning experience for the whole family, but the fruits of homeschooling have become abundantly evident and Stacey is grateful for the long-awaited call to homeschool her children.

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February 28, 2010 By admin Leave a Comment

Read, read, read. From the moments spent nursing in my arms, our children have been read to. I believe being read to has paved the way, broad and smooth, to the land of language and literacy for our children.

Our five year old is just putting letter sounds together, eyes lighting up at remembrance turning into recognizable words. Seven year Andrew is a slow and hesitant reader, and we let him move at his own pace, knowing many friends experienced with boys picking up reading at a later age. Our nine year old went from learning her phonics chart to traditional three letter books straight to chapter books at age five. We have trouble prying books from under her nose still. With all our children we have been consistent in our teaching style, which is phonetically based.

So we continue with singing our ABC song, “A says “a”, A says “a”, every letter makes a sound and A says “a”…., letting the kids play with the Leapfrog alphabet game hanging on the fridge, the Code books, and regular reading together as a family.

~ Hannah

I taught both my girls to read at the age of 4 through The Ordinary Parent’s Guide to Teaching Reading by Jesse Wise. It is a simple, text only, scripted book that is available through Peace Hill Publishing for a very economical cost! I purchased the kit and did every optional exercise and sometimes our lessons together were 15 min and other times they were 45 min but we mostly enjoyed them. There were days when it really was work to both of us (who said learning isn’t work!) but there were lots of days when we enjoyed the time with each other. They would get so excited about the progress that they could see in themselves and truly love the benefits of being able to read a book by themselves whenever they want to. I recommend this reading program to anyone serious about getting their young ones reading early and it gave me the confidence in my ability to teach my children at home. I had prepared myself for late readers (as I know there is a wide gap of normal in ages as to when they begin to blend) but I was hoping for early and I wanted to give it a try. I started teaching my firstborn with the idea of “If I can teach them to read (complex but yet so simple) then I can teach them anything!” and have pushed forward into the homeschooling world running without looking back!

~ Rachael Moriarty

Language Arts has seemed to be the hardest subject for my children to grasp. We struggled with the right curriculum for years. Both of my boys learn with a hands on approach. It was hard to find something that would fit that way of learning until last year when we stumbled across the All About Spelling curriculum. All About Spelling uses all the senses while learning to spell, read and write.

My oldest son had struggled to understand phonics rules for many years. Nothing seemed to work until we found this and now it’s finally clicked. Both of my boys are using this curriculum and it has been a huge blessing in our home.

~ Lynn Pitts

Did a certain subject ever make you question whether you were cut out to homeschool your children? Did it ever make you feel like a complete failure? Reading has been a struggle in our household. My oldest, age 6, has struggled with reading since the day we began. I bought several different phonics programs in addition to the textbook curriculum that I was just sure would be the answer to our problems. For some time, a couple friends of mine, had been suggesting Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons. One day, after watching her struggle through our lessons, I went to an online bookstore and purchased the book. I really could have saved myself a lot of money if I would have just purchased this book first.

For any homeschooling parent wondering how in the world they are going to teach their children to read- this is the book I recommend. It has step by step instructions, and, if you’re like our family, you may notice a huge difference in your child’s understanding within just a few lessons.

Looking back, I wish we would have read more books to our daughter as I truly think that would have helped prepare her for reading, but we’ve learned from our mistakes which have helped us in teaching our younger children. (By the way, our four year old is catching on with reading quickly!)

~ Mandy McGee

My first son knew all of his letters and their sounds by the time he was two and a half. Of course, he was our first, so we worked with him. We bought him foam letters for the bathtub. He had picture flashcards he’d beg me to walk him through. He watched the Leap Frog Letter Factory video. He pointed out all the letters in web addresses on the t.v. screen. And we read aloud to him daily, moving our finger under the words. One morning when he was four and I was reading to him he stopped pointing to all the letters he knew. This time he pointed to a word and said, “Mommy, what does this word say?!” I read it to him and he wanted me to back up, sound it out slowly and he copied me. That was the beginning. I wasn’t going to hold him back. If he wanted to learn I was going to teach him. I found an old phonics instruction book at my local library, bought a used copy off of ebay and we were off. Thus began our journey into reading and homeschooling. By the time he was Kindergarten age, he was reading his own birthday cards and letters. I can’t really say that I taught my oldest son to read, I just guided him as he wanted to learn.

My second son loved to write and draw by the time he was two. While visiting his grandpa the two of them sat and wrote the alphabet every evening and drew doodles all around the letters. It was a fun memory and my second son’s reading journey is dotted with neat experiences…with lots of gaps in between. This son wasn’t nearly as verbal and didn’t have the propensity to sit and look at books like my first son did. I didn’t want to fall in the trap of comparing the two of them, knowing my first had really learned at a very early age. So, I did spatial play with him instead of word play. As often as I could incorporate it into our playtime I would walk him through letter sounds, but he grew weary of that game quickly. We continued to read aloud to him daily and waited patiently for him to take an interest. His journey has been one of skill-building peaks followed by painful valleys. I have taken him through the same phonics book as his brother, but blends, diphthongs and rhymes don’t seem to make sense to him. He loves audio books and he has occasionally read a book to his baby brother, but still at nearly 8 he does not consider himself a reader. And I don’t consider myself a failure: he is young, he is male and his dad is dyslexic. It’s quite possible he’s just taking after his father, who even so has four higher degrees, so I will walk beside him for as long as it takes until reading becomes his.

~ Debra Anderson

My children are 3 and 5, so we are newly out of the alphabet phase, are currently drilling in the phonics phase, and ever-so-slowly starting into the putting-letters-together-to-form-words phase! Teaching the alphabet is the first step, and our children could recite the alphabet and recognize the 26 letters by sight before they were 2 years old. These are the methods and resources we used with success:

Lots and lots of alphabet books! We have several books with one letter per page and one (or two) objects starting with that letter illustrated alongside it. We read these all day long, and frequently used them at bedtime for one last fun practice for the day.

Meet the Letters DVD by Preschool Prep was a super-valuable resource and investment! After watching it just 3-4 times, both children knew the lowercase and uppercase letters by sight. No frills here…just pure and simple letter repetition with simple, animated graphics.

Another terrific DVD is LeapFrog’s Letter Factory! This moves a little more into the phonics realm, but it is still a terrific program for little ones to enjoy — the characters are lovable and kind!

Fun alphabet-learning games. One fun game was an alphabet paper plate caterpillar puzzle, super-cheap (homemade) and fun because of its large scale! (The tutorial is here….our fun with it is documented here!) Another fun idea the kids loved is an alphabet letter hunt, using nothing but the driveway and some sidewalk chalk! Learning combined with exercise is always a good thing!

We also provided alphabet placemats for mealtimes, alphabet puzzles for easy reach, and letter stamps for paint play

You can even build an entire preschool curriculum around the alphabet! Brightly Beaming Resources has an excellent, easy-to-follow letter-of-the-week curriculum available for free online.

~ Meg Wilson

Photo Credit: Heidi, Mt Hope Academy

Two of my children were busy, tactile learners. When they wearied of sitting, I turned learning into games with lots of action. We played Mother May I? –with phonics. I would say something like, “Tell me which word has the short “a” sound, rock, tree, or hat.” When they came up with the right answer, I had some crazy frog imitation or bird dance for them to imitate to move forward. My wiggly students were highly motivated.

When we worked a puzzle or sat at a park, I challenged my kids to identify an object that started with a particular letter. In the grocery store, my busy children had their own “lists” of items to identify. They located letters early in the phonics training and moved on to words as their skills grew.

When they began reading chapter books, we took turns reading pages or paragraphs. Observing someone else model reading aloud helped my children gain confidence. It also broke up the task of reading long pages, which seemed like a huge task to them in the beginning.

~ Rhodema

My two children have distinctly different learning styles. While my daughter seemed to absorb language and reading just by hearing and seeing the words we read to her from birth, that wasn’t enough for my son. But puzzles? Oh, how he has always loved puzzles! A simple, wooden ABC puzzle kept him entranced. Soon, he was able to put the letters in the correct spots – no small feat with 26 cut-outs. Learning letter names and sounds quickly followed, and I am convinced that process helped my kinesthetic learner become an early reader. For both children, sing-song books like the Jesse Bear series, Dr. Seuss and a few other treasures made reading come alive. Even though my youngest is now 11, I could still quote some of those early books in my sleep.

~ Chris Worthy

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February 27, 2009 By AmyStults 10 Comments

Dolche Words
I wrote the 100 most common sight words on index cards and punched a hole in the upper corner of each one. I placed all the cards on MY metal ring. When he was able to read a word he got to “steal” it from me and place it on HIS metal ring. He loved this because it was a competitive game and he really enjoyed seeing my stack dwindle. If we reviewed his whole stack and he forgot one, I got to take it back. It was a lot of fun for both of us.

Treasure Hunt
My son LOVED going on treasure hunts. For anything and everything. So I took advantage of this by writing some of his toy names on index cards. First, I hid the toys around the house. Next, I took the cards and placed them in the treasure chest. He drew a card, read it and went off in search of the hidden toy. Sometimes we did this in reverse, where I hid the cards and he chose a toy from the treasure chest.

Word Ladder
I drew a large ladder on a piece of cardboard and let him use his favorite action figure to climb the ladder. With each correct word, the action figure got to climb a ladder rung.

Pancakes, Pancakes
I use the Dolche sight words again and wrote them on circles of tan or cream construction paper, to resemble pancakes. I would place a”pancake” into a frying pan and tell him that he had to hurry up and read the word and flip it with the spatula before it burnt.

CH-SH-TH-WH
I wrote out these 4 digraphs on a large piece of cardboard. Each one had it’s own square large enough for him to stand in. I would call out a word (such as shoe, whale, couch, or three) and he would jump to the corresponding square.

Amy is a devoted wife, Classical homeschooling mom to a six-year-old Superhero and the co-owner of Heart of the Matter. She has a passion for genealogy and is aspiring to be a Proverbs 31 lady. Be sure to visit her blog at Milk and Cookies.

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