Several young moms have been asking how we taught our children to read. We haven’t really used a set curriculum; we’ve basically used common sense and things around us. If you want details, here is part of a letter Sonya wrote to a young mom several years ago when she asked how to teach her child to read.

Of course, the fundamental for this approach is reading books together—lots of books; lots of good books. You already know this fact, but it can’t be ignored.

Step One: Learn the alphabet.

  • Edmark’s computer game Bailey’s Book House
  • Magnetic letters on the refrigerator. When they finish a meal early, we send them to fetch specific letters, one at a time. When four or five are on the table, we tell them which ones to take back, one at a time. Usually we start with A-C; after they have those down, we add a couple more, etc. until all the letters are known.
  • We haven’t done it, but a friend has done a Letter of the Day thing. One day features one letter of the alphabet. They practice identifying that letter anywhere they can. They practice writing that letter. They eat food that begins with that letter and do activities that begin with that letter. You get the idea.
  • Comments: This is a testimony to the fact that children will learn with or without our help. All three of my older girls have picked up the alphabet without formal instruction on my part. If they’re exposed to a language-rich environment, they’ll learn it. Simply pointing out one letter on a sign takes all of – what? – one second. But they’ll remember that if they’re ready for it.

Step Two: Connect beginning sounds to alphabet letters.

  • Read alphabet books that tell objects starting with each letter.
  • Play the “I’m thinking of . . .” game whenever you want to; e.g., on a car trip, waiting in a doctor’s office, at lunch. Mom says, “I’m thinking of an animal that starts with the letter blank.” Then I make the beginning sound a couple of times to head them in the right direction. If they get confused and give wrong answers, I give more clues like what noise the animal makes, what color it is, etc. Not focusing on the beginning sound necessarily. They’ll make the connection when they’re ready. In the meantime they’re hearing it and their little brain is storing it for future reference. Sometimes it gets a bit wild when the child wants to give the clues but they don’t know what letter it actually starts with. In that case, I just guess animals with the beginning sound they said. If they tell me, “No, it’s . . .” this other animal that doesn’t begin with that letter, I let it pass and just acknowledge that I didn’t guess it. Again, they’ll make the connection by hearing my animal list and catch on pretty soon. By the way, this is another fun, informal way to teach colors and shapes. Only it changes to “I see something that’s color or shape.” They have to look around and suggest everything they can find. (We play the shape game a lot in public bathrooms while we’re standing there waiting for one of the three to finish.)
  • I can’t remember doing this for every letter, but sometimes we’ll get an old catalog and look for things that start with a certain letter. We label a piece of paper and cut out all the appropriate pictures and glue them on. Two or three pictures is sufficient. Don’t push it.

Step Three: Connect ending sounds with alphabet letters.

  • This is a bit trickier and we don’t spend a lot of time on it. Just enough to make it a fun game and expose them to the idea that sounds end a word too. You can basically do the beginning sound activities but change them to ending sounds instead. Don’t push this too hard or they might get frustrated. They don’t need to master it, but simply to be exposed to the concept.

Step Four: Put letter sounds together to make words.

  • Now we’re into the “scary” part the first time I tried this. The main kicker was the vowels. “But they can make so many different sounds!” I thought. Yes, but it was amazing how quickly the girls figured out the word once we got the sound even somewhat close. I used the BOB books to get started. They’re OK, but I don’t want to spend a lot of time on them. The story lines are pretty lame since they focus on one vowel sound.
  • You want specifics? OK, here’s a sample “lesson” as near as I can remember it. We open the first little book and the first page reads “Sam and cat.” I point to the s and say, “What sound does the s make?” (reaffirm correct answer or gently correct mistake). I point to the a and say, “An a can say it’s own name ‘aye’ or it can say ‘aaa.’ In this book the a’s will say “aaa.” So we put ssss and aaaa together “saaa.” Point to the m, ask for the sound, put all three sounds together to make “sam.” (Big hurrahs and hugs.) Do you want to try another word? OK. Same thing with “and” and “cat” if she wants to keep going. Next page is “Mat and cat.” Now here I got frustrated because I thought she’d remember “and cat,” of course. She didn’t. It took several SHORT sessions (5-10 minutes) over several days (maybe 1 or 2 a day). Sometimes I thought she’d never get it, we’d sit and drooooonnnnneeee the letters into words until I questioned whether she was really ready for this. But she kept at it of her own will. And pretty soon we were down to droonnnee.
  • We looked for library books in the Easy section that reinforced and supplemented the level she had finished or was working on.
  • When we finished the BOB books, I went to the first Pathway Readers book. This is a publishing house for Amish schools. Great books that uphold godly character and family values with wholesome, innocent stories. Their first reader First Steps has a section in small print for the teacher/parent to read to get the story started. Then the child finishes the story by reading the simplified large print. At this point I incorporated phonics rules as necessary to help in decoding the words. From there we simply continued in the Pathway Readers until the girls were reading fine and were actually resenting the “read aloud to Mom” time because they would rather read by themselves. I persisted only until I was sure they could read with comprehension, then I turned them loose. (I think they went through the Grade 2 or 3 readers.) Now they read books that I approve and we keep a “read aloud” classic going with me reading a chapter a day aloud to them. This helps them learn vocabulary, proper reading cadence, voice inflection, etc. Plus it gives us a “bonding” time and exposes them to great authors’ thoughts. BTW, I purchased all of the Pathway Readers (through 8th grade I think) just because the stories were so good. They finished the others as leisure reading.
  • One recent discovery will be incorporated into the younger two’s reading experience. I got a book and tape called the Scaredy Cat Reading System that assigns letters different personalities which make the phonics rules easy to remember. I think I’m going to just incorporate some of the ideas as I teach the younger two to read instead this time around. For example, there’s a little song that teaches the five vowels. Then the concept that vowels are scaredy cats. They’re scared of all the other letters, called consonants. “When they’re surrounded or come first, they’re just as scared as they can be.” But when two are together, the second vowel pokes the first vowel and says, “Come on, be brave; say your name.” When the vowel e is at the end of a word, he pokes his head around a tree (one consonant between the vowel and the e) and says, “Come on, be brave; say your name.” R is a bully who makes the vowels say his sound. You get the idea. It’s cute and might make it easier to teach the vowels this time around. There are songs to go with each rule, but I probably won’t use them all.

That’s about it. In case you’re wondering, I can still evaluate the older girls’ reading comprehension skills by listening to them tell me about a book they are reading. (Assuming I’ve read the book too.) I love Charlotte Mason’s quote, “Once the habit of reading his lesson-books with delight is set up in a child, his education is—not completed,—but ensured.”