Learning to Read At Joyful Mornings (Part 1)

I thought it would be nice to have a bit of change of pace in this blog once in a while - a departure from the deadly serious to focus on the practical day-to-day of our lives once in a while.

I'm now well into the process of teaching a second child (Angelina) to read, so I thought I might outline some of our methods and share some of the resources I've created so that others don't have to completely reinvent the wheel.

With all the reading resources out there I suppose it seems strange that I've chosen to kind of create my own program, but it's not just because I'm a sucker for punishment. When I was first looking at teaching Miss Curie to read I faced a few dilemmas.

1)Most of what was available at our local library was based on a whole-language or look and say approach. While these methods definitely have their place in some situations, my personal opinion is that these are the exception, not the rule. I might keep some of my thoughts about the different learning to read methods for another post. Suffice it to say, based on my teaching/tutoring experience and anecdotal evidence of friends and family, I decided that phonics would be the best starting point for teaching our girls to read.

2)The few phonics books available at our library or some of the cheaper reading programs I could find to buy didn't allow for much practice of particular sounds or rules. I was looking for something that would start with just a few sounds and gradually build up Miss Curie's "repertoire" of sounds, while still giving her the chance to experience reading for herself, rather than just identifying the beginning or ending sounds of words (although that was where we started more informally)

3)I wanted a way to teach Miss Curie to JUST look at the words, not depend on the pictures or memory to "read" without really reading. Given her personality, I was pretty sure that if I let her get into haphazard methods of "reading" without really understanding how words and sounds are put together, then it would be very hard for her to progress later on. Since verbal language is one of Miss Curie's strengths (and even more so for Angelina), she would memorize most of a book after hearing it just once, so I couldn't use books that we had already read to her to teach her to read.

4)I wanted to start really small, but for Miss Curie to feel that she had really achieved something in our reading "sessions".

All these factors led me to writing super-short stories for her to "illustrate" herself. In each of these I tried to focus on very few sounds and the only "sight" word was "the".

Here are a few examples of our first stories:

The cat is fat.
The cat sat on the hat.
The hat is flat.
The cat is sad.

The pig is big.
The pig can dig.

As I come across others I'll gradually add them to this blog for my own records. Anyone reading this is welcome to use and share these as well (although it's not that hard to make up your own stuff anyway!). Anything that I share here is to be shared free of charge though, not to be resold in any form (not that I can imagine producing anything worth paying for - as I say, it's not that hard to make up your own basic stories with a few simple words!)

Just a final note on b,d,p and q... I've been pretty quick to correct our girls when they get these confused without making a big deal about it. When I was a kid, I used to get them confused and write in mirror writing (seems to be slightly more common with us "lefties"), but I just grew out of it. Miss Curie occasionally gets numbers backwards still, but is fine with letters, so my feeling is that until age six or seven getting the orientation of letters confused is not a big deal and most kids will grow out of it. However, I'm NOT an expert, so if there is any doubt I definitely recommend talking to someone who is!

A Blatant Regard For Others

A couple of days ago I dropped off Miss Curie for an afternoon activity. It was a pretty warm afternoon and I backed into the car park so I could get home quickly and get dinner organised as soon as Miss Curie was "signed in". I came back out to my car just a few minutes later to find another car parked directly in front of mine, completely blocking my exit. This was in an otherwise almost-empty car park.

This wasn't really a big deal. It wasn't very long before the driver of the other car came back out and drove away. My life went on pretty much as usual. However, even a few minutes delay was inconvenient. Hanging around in a car park with two small and grumpy children is no fun. I was in a quandary - should I just wait, or should I try to track down the owner of the car in case they were more than a few minutes? And I'll admit, I was more than a little peeved that in a car park with loads of other spaces close to the building, someone had had the blatant disregard for my needs to park their car in a way that totally blocked me in.

Such situations tend to get me pondering, and what came of my pondering was this. The Christian calling is about a lot more than NOT having a blatant disregard for others. It is very easy for me to feel superior to that sweet-looking older lady who drove away a few minutes later, just because I've never blocked someone else in like that (and who knows, she may, in fact, have had a really good reason). However, I have no business feeling one tiny bit superior, because I am still being passive. My first consideration in making decisions is what is best for me. I invariably choose the "path of least resistance" unless it is clearly morally wrong. This doesn't make me good, just lazy.

What if I rose to a higher standard? What if I started making decisions with a blatant regard for others? When I really meditate on the life of Christ, I'm overwhelmed by a sense of His perfection. He did so much more than JUST not do wrong - He did everything absolutely right. He always chose the "best for others" option, not the "best for me while not hurting anyone else option".

So anyway, that's what I'm working on - having a blatant regard for others. Someone let me know when I'm perfect!