Teaching Your Child to Read -With Different Learning Styles

When I started the journey of homeschooling one of the biggest things that I was nervous about was how to teach our children how to read.  Reading is such a basic and fundamental core to the rest of life's learning.  I want our children to have a love of reading and a love of learning and so I was a bit intimidated by the task.  I had read about Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons and it seemed almost TOO simple!  Just follow along with the book, it tells you EXACTLY what to say as a parent/teacher and by the end your child will be reading is what it claimed. 

Now, let me back up a little bit.  Reading has ALWAYS been very important in our family.  We start reading to our children when they are born and they have always had a love for books.  I was not surprised when our oldest son personally asked to learn to read right before his 4th birthday.  We got the book and started with lesson #1!  A few weeks in we were not really struggling, but it also was not a lot of fun.  Since he was still so young we decided to stop and pick it back up later.  Well, we started again about 9 months later when he was 4 1/2 years old and it was like I was working with a completely different child.  He was ready, engaged and loved every minute of it.  Being our oldest he is driven, likes to please and we had such a joy going through this book together and learning how to read.  He finished the book in about 7 months and has moved from 100 Easy Lessons to BOB books, then to Little Stories for Little Folks, to now reading just about anything he wants to including early reader chapter books. 

 

 

 

Our second son has a completely different personality, so doing everything with him is MUCH different than with our oldest.  I knew that teaching him reading, or anything for that matter, would also be a much different experience.  It has been such a blessing with homeschooling to not only be able to determine our children's learning styles but be able to work with those different styles and see them easily excel.  Our second son knew his ABC's at 2 years old (maybe even earlier).  He could recognize all of the alphabet and put his alphabet puzzle together in order by 2 1/2 years old. 

 

 

By 3 years old he was reciting by word all of his favorite books like Chicka Chicka Boom, Boom, Pete the Cat or Blue Hat Green Hat!  He loved to watch the Leap Frog or Preschool Prep videos and by 3 1/2 years old he knew all of his letter sounds, a handful of sight words and basic blends.  We have a lot of learning base toys and his favorite have always been alphabet or word games.  So much so that his older brother nicknamed him "The Letters Guy!"  He even got to a point where he would take a BOB book or another easy reader and sound out the ENTIRE book with each individual letter sound.  It was hilarious and completely adorable.  So, this summer at a little older than 3 1/2 years old he asked to do the same book his big brother did to learn how to read.

 

 

I started teaching the same way I taught his older brother, following the prompts, putting our finger under each letter to sound it out and then say it fast putting it all together and was met with TEARS!  "I CAN DO IT!!  NO TOUCH IT MOM, I CAN READ!"  He did not want my involvement at all, but much to my surprise, when I backed off, guess what, he can read.  Literally, he is past lesson 30 now and he does not even sound the words out before he simply reads sentences.  If he is struggling with a particular word he does not want help sounding it out or breaking it into the different sounds but will sit there himself and take the time to break it down.  I am so glad that I have this opportunity to be available to each of our children's learning styles to truly help them succeed and learn new skills!

Reading Aloud is still a huge part of our daily homeschool schedule even though our children are learning to read independently, and we love our weekly trips to the library.  Stay tuned for a review on The Read Aloud Handbook as well as some of our past Read Alouds and some of our upcoming planned Read Alouds!  We have come a long way from a few years ago where I was terrified to teach our children to read and now I cannot wait for our younger children to grow to the age of reading themselves as well!