On Reading

About 20 years before the modern homeschooling movement started here in the US, my mother taught my sisters and me to read. She had been concerned by the late 1950s reports showing public school children having difficulty in this area. She figured she could do better and taught each of us phonics before we started school.

Perhaps long-forgotten pleasantries still fill my mind from this experience; I have found it a delight to teach reading. With our oldest son, Isaac, I loved sitting with him, taking turns reading -- sometimes I would have him read an easier selection, and I'd read something more challenging to him. In either case, I'd make sure he noticed whatever concept we were learning, short A, silent E, and so forth. He did great, but needed some encouragement in sounding words out for himself. I tried to make a big deal out of "our secret code" of reading and he  loved that idea.

Samuel seems like he has been driven to read from the start. When he started differentiating shapes, I figured letters would not be much of a stretch. Sure enough, he quickly learned his letters and loved pointing to them if we walked past a sign. I made up a silly song to help him learn the letter/sound associations and soon he was doing them on his own. "A is for apple, B is for ball, C is for ..."

Late last school year, he read his first little book and seemed fascinated by spelling. With almost no prompting on my part, he started trying to remember how to spell just about any word he learned to read; Now he constantly surprises me with the words he recognizes and spells. (I must add here, that he has insisted on having the closed captioning for any video he watches. I'm sure this greatly contributed to both his reading and spelling.)

Here's the catch: he doesn't always know the mechanics behind his reading. I'm concerned that if he ever backtracks (a phenomenon I've noticed in his development) if he doesn't know principles (i.e., the long vowels, short vowels, when and why some are long and short and so forth), he may have trouble continuing with his learning. He's also so driven to understand how things work, I'm concerned he might get very frustrated if he doesn't someday recognize the framework.

Sigh. I'm trying to incorporate some of these phonics basics with our day-to-day reading in small doses so he doesn't get bored. I'm hoping he'll have the fun of reading while getting the nitty gritty at the same time. Always an adventure ...