How did YOU teach your dc how to read?

[hsumam11]

We're slowly starting the alphabet w/ my almost 2.5 y.o. ds and he's loving it - he's always loved it when we read to him, even when he was really young. [] Anyways, just curious how you mamas taught your dc to read - I'd appreciate any advice! TIA!

[hahamommy]

We read a lot, *I* read a lot. The only *thing* I did is make sure the captioning is always on the television and we watch all movies with subtitles (mostly because I like it, but both have been proven to help with reading comprehension). At young age Hayden began writing spontaneously; we have notebooks filled with lists he would make, words he would copy down or I would spell patiently for him. Hannah didn't, she was much more into drawing pictures at that age, so I learned to breathe and maintain faith that just as she learned to walk and talk and the other 1,000 things she'd figured out... embracing the written word would come to her, too. And it did! Both of my kids magically read at 6.5 -- no lessons, no coersion... modeling a love of reading, providing many opportunities to read and a lot of faith - that's what worked for us.

~diana

[Hera]

I read a lot, it's like my drug or security blanket or something. I read to my kids a lot too, during the day and at bedtime. Dd1, at 4.5, went to a 4 yo's birthday. He was sounding out the words on the placemat. She had a fiercely competitive moment, and decided she wanted to read.

A year or so before, she had decided she wanted to learn to use the computer. Her dad is always on it, he writes software from home. We found starfall.com and let her play around on that, mostly clicking the pictures to make them do things. She knew that it was a learn to read site, because I had experimented with getting her interested in that aspect, but she really hadn't been until this party.

She was so upset that a 4 year old could read when she was 4.5, that she (with my help) moved through the starfall lessons in about a week. Then she read from One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish to me at bedtime, and was pretty much off and running. Sometime later she taught herself chapter books because she wanted to read Harry Potter a million times, I had already read it to her so she new the story and could pronounce names and difficult words from memory.

All this just to say that she was an early reader, but the choice was hers.

[moominmamma]

What I did was I read aloud a lot, and read to myself a lot, and let my kids grow up in a house where print resources are everywhere and demonstrably valued. And I answered their questions at face value. Like Fiona's question this morning, "Does this [pointing to MRDER, which she has spelled out in fridge magnets] spell 'murder'?"

Miranda

[luvmybabies]

We used Teach Your Child To Read In 100 Easy Lessons, for ds, and are currently using it with dd. It is NOT for everyone though, and certainly not unschooler-like. But it worked beautifully for ds and he was so happy to learn to read.

[LeftField]

Originally Posted by moominmamma

What I did was I read aloud a lot, and read to myself a lot, and let my kids grow up in a house where print resources are everywhere and demonstrably valued.

Ditto this. We read a lot. We go to the library a lot. We're swimming in books. My oldest son has just started teaching himself to read a couple of weeks ago, with a little help from us. Before then, he wasn't interested. I think he had some self-imposed performance anxiety too. I stressed that I would continue to read aloud to him for as long as he wanted. It was like something just clicked for him. I had read about this process before, namely in unschooling threads, but reading was still an area that I was a little nervous about. But then I saw it for myself. When they're ready, they will do it. Until then, it's important to nurture a passion for books. The love of books becomes the motivation for learning to decode them.

[Serendipity]

Spell to Write and Read has worked really well for my son, and if you aren't opposed to movies, the leapfrog series has letter factory and storybook factory which my son LOVED and got a lot out of.

[Stayseeliz]

The Leapfrog videos (The Letter and Word Factory I think) refinforced the letter sounds and basic phonics after he'd learned letter recognition. We're not moving through Alphaphonics and the BOB books. We're going slow but he's really enjoying it!

[Roo_Online]

With DD#1, I started to teach her to read before she was ready at age four. I realized I was enthusiatic for her to read, but she wasn't. So I backed off and kept on reading aloud to her.

When she turned six, I stared working with her using Phonics Pathways and Bob Books, and she made steady but slow progress.

Then I got sick and I couldn't read aloud to her for a few days. So she picked up the book we were reading and proceeded to read it herself.

She's been reading non-stop ever since. She's an excellent reader and writer now, but I still read aloud to her because we both enjoy it so much. And she carries on the tradition by reading aloud to her younger brother.

[momofjoshnkylie]

We used the Leap frog videos which my kids LOVED. We read ALOT, anything and everything. We have started doing 100 Easy Lessons (I'm teaching both my 5 and almost 4 year old at the same time lol! ) and I have purchased the BOB books which they love.

I've also heard reading alot of rhyming books can help with reading development. One teacher I have heard from has said that highschoolers aren't reading as well as they used to because they are finding that they don't know their nursery rhymes. I thought that was sort of interesting.

Anyway, that's my 2 cents.

[Butter]

When Ani was 4 1/2 she said she wanted to learn to read. We were using Calvert then and so got Come Read With Me. Within a few days she was reading. Since then (she's near 7) she's just read a lot. She can now read anything you throw at her. My older son is 5 and is just now getting interested in reading. He has no interest whatsoever in learning letters or the sounds they make. He wants to READ. He told me to read the same books over and over to him so he can memorize them and figure out what the letters say that way.

[sweetfeet]

Originally Posted by Stayseeliz

The Leapfrog videos (The Letter and Word Factory I think) refinforced the letter sounds and basic phonics after he'd learned letter recognition. We're not moving through Alphaphonics and the BOB books. We're going slow but he's really enjoying it!

That is exactly what we did. The Leapfrog videos were really helpful. When I was trying to teach her letter sounds on my own she wasn't so interested, but set to the music in the dvd she picked it up really quickly.

[hsumam11]

Thanks for all your input, mamas! Now I have a few questions - what are these BOB books that posters are talking about? Also, I know you can't rush kids into learning but how do you know when they are ready to learn? What are some signs? TIA!

[chanale]

Christian - http://www.bobbooks.com/bobbooks.htm I've seen them in the local bookstore.

[LeftField]

Originally Posted by hsumam11

Thanks for all your input, mamas! Now I have a few questions - what are these BOB books that posters are talking about? Also, I know you can't rush kids into learning but how do you know when they are ready to learn? What are some signs? TIA!

We got our Bob books at Barnes and Noble. They're kind of like "Dick and Jane". Like book 1 of level 1 goes something like, "Mat. Sam. Mat sat. Sam sat. Mat sat on Sam." The drawings are stick-figure style drawings with no color.

Everyone has a different approach and all kids are different in terms of what they want and need. Both my kids are extremely stubborn and internally motivated so that: 1. they don't want me to lead them and 2. they are always busy doing whatever it is they do. So, I didn't set out to teach my kids to read. Other people do, because it's good for them. It's whatever works for your family.

In my personal opinion, the signs that they are ready to learn is when they start asking you what things say and when they have more than a passing interest in it. My kids asked what things said from a very young age, but they didn't have more than a passing interest in it. My oldest actually asked me to sit with him and teach him to read at 4, but after 10 minutes, he was incredibly bored and annoyed so we both agreed to just stop doing it. In my personal experience, the readiness signs that my oldest son displayed was when he simply started reading. Also, I really believe that there's an individual developmental stage where they get the big picture and it just "clicks" for them; I don't believe that can be hurried. I'm going to assume that it's the same for my youngest. I assume he will just start reading at some point, and then ask the detailed questions that my oldest did at that point.

The reason why I did not strive to teach my kids to read before they initiated it is because I couldn't see any advantages to it. I'm, personally, not sure of what the point is of teaching a very young child to read when they aren't in an environment that requires reading yet and when it doesn't translate to them being more fluent readers at a later stage. Actually, it would have possibly saved me from reading aloud so much (soooo tedious, not a nice thing to say but it's true) but I think I would keep reading aloud to my kids even after they become fluent readers. For us, personally, I didn't see the point. I figured it was on their developmental timetable, not mine.

[UlrikeDG]

We've used all of the following:
Starfall
BOB Books
Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons
Phonics Pathways

I think they also picked up a lot from watching Between the Lions on PBS. I think the thing that matters most, however, is simply reading aloud to them a lot.

[luvmybabies]

I agree they will ask you what things say. My son actually asked to learn to read. Now we're starting it up with dd and she also said she wanted to learn.

[Mirzam]

The only child I have taught to read is my youngest when he was five. I used Turbo Reader, a very traditional phonics program. It worked! For books we used the Bob books although his very favorite was "The Primer" by Harriet Treadwell (1910).

[2 in August]

For us, we started playing with an a,b,c puzzle that dd got when she turned 2yo. As we were playing we would talk about words that started with each letter. I wasn't really even thinking about teaching her to read, we were just playing. Then as she got a bit older she would come up with other words and ask if they started with whatever letter she was guessing. She said she wanted to read before she was 4yo, but she resisted me actually teaching her. So we got the Leap Frog videos (ack! if anyone would have told former teacher me that I'd use a video to teach my kid to read ). Anyway, she is really musical and the videos really helped her make sense of what I had been trying to teach her. The Between the Lions videos are really good too. She's now about 5.5 yo and is starting to read. She has tons of her own books and we get tons each week from the library. I read a lot and even though he's not into books, dh always has magazines he's reading.

I really believe that kids will let you know when they are ready and that you don't need a reading program to do it.

[hsumam11]

Thanks, again, for sharing your experiences, mamas! I can't wait til ds asks me to teach him to read! We've always read lots to him - now we're just doing little things like putting the subtitles on all the kid-friendly movies we watch and showing him some LeapFrog videos.