How can I help him learn to read? What am I doing wrong? Help?:)

I don’t think your doing anything wrong! Boys tend to be later readers then girls.  I have two girls and a boy.  My son didn’t really read until he was in third grade.  I was in a panic at the beginning of the year because 3rd grade is required standardized testing in Colorado.  By the time January arrived he was reading great and when we got the end of the year test results back he scored in the 98th percentile for reading (16th for spelling-sigh- I guess you can’t nail them all) :).  If you really think he’s not getting it and he has no desire to read right now, I’d say do LOTS of reading aloud, listen to lots of books on tape to develop his “story sense”, and put the phonics book away for a month.  In a month pull it out and try again.  If he seems to be interested in learning to read you could try the program “teach you child to read with children’s books”  which uses the “To (You read it to them); With (you read it with them) By (it’s read By them)” method and might help prevent frustration and feeling of failure.  Mostly, just know that reading is a developmental skill and it develops at different times for different kids.  The idea that ALL kids can and should read by the end on kindergarten is an evil, evil myth.  Remember that it wasn’t until recently that ANY kids were expected to read in kindergarten.  Five (and 6) is still really young–you’ve got lots of time.

Lindsey

Okay, breathe in, breathe out, and stop trying to teach your child to read.  (Breathe in and out again…)  Now let me just ((HUG)) you.  Charlotte Mason didn’t even begin students until they were 6 in her schools so you don’t even need to consider the alphabet until April.  Now don’t you feel better?  🙂

I’ll tell you something else that may make you feel better – I’m momma to 9 kids and currently my 5th child is learning to read.  He’s going to be 7 next month and he’s not reading beyond cvc words (short vowels), and those he pretty much has to sound out every time (hasn’t gained fluency).  You know what?  It’s ok!  My four kids older than him all learned on their own timeline.  One really figured it out at 6.5, the next at almost 9, the third at 7.5, and the fourth beat the two just older than him in learning to read and taught himself with zero input from me to read chapter books at age 3.  I’ve come to the conclusion that if you give them time to want to learn to read and then offer them the tools (a mix of phonics knowledge – what do letters say, and sight words to give them some fluency with frequently seen words) they will generally figure it out.  The other key in my opinion is short, daily lessons.  Keep it short so they don’t get frustrated and bored.  Keep it daily so that they are soaking it in to their mind regularly.

What to use?  Anything or nothing.  With some we just made alphabet cards and started putting them together to make words.  Others we had some phonics readers (Now I’m Reading sets by Nora Gaydos) to give them practice.  Now I use All About Reading in a very loose way – we linger for weeks on a single concept until he has it, and then when it is grasped we move ahead to the next lesson.  We go back and repeat things, play with language, and just enjoy it.  It is basically my brain for what to cover next – which is helpful when I’m bouncing between caring for a newborn to teaching Algebra to my high schooler to helping my 6 year old crack the reading code.

Kindergarteners in public school may be doing a lot of “reading work”, but very few of them are actually reading at this point. I taught 1st grade before I started homeschooling, and I had to start at the very beginning every year because so few kids are really ready to read in kindergarten.

My advice would be to take a little break (starting back up again when he turns 6 sounds about right to me, but you could easily wait until next fall) and just play, sing songs, try some rhyming games, read to him, and explore whatever he is interested in right now. Take some time to look at different phonics programs. OPG is a little dull for my taste, and there are so many different programs that I’m sure you’ll find one that suits your son better. A couple of my kids have liked workbooks, so Explode the Code has been great for them. For my boys who just want to “get it done” so they can go play, Alpha-Phonics has been quick and painless.

Your son is so young that you do have some time to figure all this out. 🙂

I had early readers with my first two kids (probably because I was so. darn. focused and put way too much stress on them). My third and fourth boys took a little longer, but were reading by six. Then came the baby of the family! And this is where the genetic prediliction on my husband’s side toward dyslexia finally showed up.

So, it has been a longer and slower road for him learning to read. We used Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons in the beginning, which had worked fine for the other kids. It did not click with him at all. I switched to All About Reading last year and with the letter tiles and fun work, his lights finally started to come on. BUT – then again, he may just have been ready and so what I was trying was finally clicking!

Anyway, now that he is 7 he is reading at first grade level.  He still doesn’t show a lot of interest in reading for himself, but he loves to be read to and can narrate with good fluency. He is very math oriented (knew his multiplication tables instinctively) and can take apart a simple machine and put it back together again.

So my point is that, yes, your son will learn to read. Continue to do the fun, enjoyable things like snuggling up with a good book together. Let him see you reading so that it becomes natural for him to look at a book as an enjoyable experience. Make a big deal out of your visits to the library, and leave visually rich books laying around where he can peruse them. But most importantly, celebrate his strengths and who he is apart from his performance in reading. It will relieve the pressure from both of you, make him more confident in tackling new tasks, and eventually pay off in his reading as well. ((Hugs)).

Sounds like a very healthy boy!:)  My 6 year old runs the minute he even thinks we might do formal schooling.  He’s so busy, and loves hands on activities, and can’t stand bookwork/sitting.  We do about 5 minutes a day of either reading or math, and not in traditional ways.  I like to put out sight words (or you could do letters/sounds) and have him jump on them when I say them.  Or he can toss the cards and run around and find the one I say.  Jump for rhyming words, sit down for non-rhyming words, etc.  It helps a lot instead of sitting down on the dreaded couch (as my son put it:) for a reading lesson.

I know some might discourage this, but I strongly recommend the Leapfrog videos, Letter Factory and Word Factory (and there are many more, math too).  I didn’t know about them with my first 4 children, but used them with the last two, the 6 year old and 3 year old.  They both knew their letters and sounds within a week of watching the videos.  The first 4 children took much longer to learn the sounds/words.  My 3 year old is very delayed in his speech too, so for him to know all the sounds they make is pretty amazing.

I don’t really use curriculum for reading, just some free BOB readers we were given, maybe they are used in Hooked on Phonics?  After teaching the first four to read the same way, I am a firm believer in using what motivates them.  Most of the curriculums don’t do that, so I found books they liked and read out loud a lot.  Then as they learned more words, I found which books they preferred and we worked from those.  Just consistently trying to read, with gentle correction, and you see what catches each child; some struggle more with vowels sounds, some with silent e at the end, etc.  So just through reading a lot together, they all learned to read fairly quickly and in a relaxed way.

I know it might not work that well for others, but my kids learn so differently yet it worked for all four so it’s worth trying!

Have fun and enjoy your busy boy!  And welcome to wonderful advice here on the forum, has blessed me so many times through the years!

Oops!  A quick correction–the program is called Reading Lessons through Literature.  It is truly a gentle approach.