Starting Reading

Our family is about to undergo a whole lot of changes (see here) so things are a bit topsy turvy here lately. However, in the midst of it, Norah and I began our reading lessons. Preschool will most definitely still be going on, but it will be a bit different than I imagined for the next few months. It may be a combination of Grandma helping out, reading together at bedtime, and the lessons that will come from learning new places, making new friends, and of course overseas travel. (Check the link so you can find out what I'm talking about!!)

But reading. I've been studying up on how to teach it, it really intimidated me. But, although I still have lots to learn, I'm realizing, just like everything with raising and teaching children, it's a lot more common sense than I thought. I found an excellent series of posts from a lady who shared how she started reading lessons with her four year old, following the Charlotte Mason pattern. These posts were so helpful to me, and basically what I started practicing with Norah. 

It's basically a mix of phonics and memorization/sight words. She's still young (turning four next month) so we're going really slowly. We started with a sentence in a book that had become really familiar to her (she knew the sentence by heart). Then I wrote each word on a card, cut them out, and had her play with the words - put them in order, mix them up and identify them, etc. Then we practice frequently with that sentence. You have to check the Charlotte Mason blog above - she gives step by step exactly how to use this method. With the phonics lessons too, we followed the steps from the blog. Basically we took magnetic letters and spelled "at." Then we practiced putting initial consonants on to "at" - c, f, r, s, etc. So for the next while, I think the lessons will continue this way: a mix of memorizing/learning words by sight, and learning the rules of phonics and word families. We're mostly using the books we're reading together, and whenever we come across familiar words I'm having her read them herself. I also try to have her hunt for the words she knows in the text. 

I can tell a lot of it is just her memorizing, but that's ok. That's so much of what reading is anyway. But we're taking it slow, and we'll continue practicing the phonics a lot. I have some other phonics books and games around the house that we'll incorporate too.