So Zoe and I have been working through this book called Teacher Your Child to Read in20 Easy Lessons.
This will take us at least a year to go through at this point. We’re on lesson 4, learning letter sounds N, I (as in igloo), and F. Each lesson introduces three or four new letter sounds. At this point, she can read any book that has letter sounds C as in cat, S, T, A as in alligator, O as in octopus, M, D, E as in egg, R, G, and TH (combo sound) plus the three new sounds for this lesson. She can read full simple sentences such as, “Sam the dog got the egg”. By the end of the book here is a sample of what she will be able to read.
“Every morning before breakfast, I bring the newspaper for my grandpa. We sit in the room and he reads to me about the world. Then it is time for school. Before I go, I stop at the door and say, see you when I get back Grandpa.”
Personally, I’m quite impressed at the book, both the content and the speed at which they move ahead. Each “lesson” is about 20 mini lessons in one. So far, we have been working through about two pages a day, but as things get more difficult, we will slow down to a page or a page and a half. She has learned both specific letter sounds, but more importantly she has learned how to sound out those specific letter sounds to make a word. If a word has not yet become a sight word for her, she will sound it out as you’ll see her do in the video. At this point, she is beginning to pick up on some simple words like mom, dad, sat, rat, the, etc. She no longer has to sound these types of words out. The book is really good about being repetitive with words that they use while slowly introducing new ones. Each letter sound is identified with a specific picture. For instance, "a" has a few sounds. The time they taught A was by identifying it with the picture of an alligator...this helps them differentiate between sounds.
I’m not sure exactly of the level, but I’m assuming that by the time we finish this book next year, she will be possibly on a 2nd grade reading level. Part of me doesn’t want to get her to this point because I don’t want her to be bored in school, but part of me knows that even where she is, not only with reading but knowledge in other areas like math, she would be bored in kindergarten, even if she were to step foot in school today. The student learning expectations in kindergarten are so simple. I guess that they assume that you are having to start at square one with each child. So they teach number 1-10, shapes like circle, square, etc., ABC’s, colors. Not many parents “teach” their children things like where they live, the ABC’s, their numbers, their shapes. Sadly, Zoe will be among the minority with what she goes into kindergarten knowing. She’s not even four, but she knows how to count to about 50 without skipping a beat. She knows that when you have 3 apples and add two to it, you have 5 apples. She knows her ABC’s and is learning all letter sounds. She knows shapes such as trapezoid, hexagon (she has nerdy math parents, remember?).
Despite what other people often think, we have never just sat down and done drills and flashcards with our kids. But Darin and I are very intentional with how we play with them…especially me being home with them all day. Every time we play with them there is a teachable opportunity. Even just by asking questions like, “where in this room do you see circles?” is teaching. Through putting together “educational puzzles”, both kids have learned shapes (even ones like hexagon and trapezoid), all letters upper and lower case, and numbers. There are all sorts of educational toys that they have a blast playing with and that reinforce those basic things. I wish all parents thought this way, but the reality is that statistics tell us that over 50% of kindergarteners are unprepared to enter school.
Sorry..I’ll get off my soap box now. We are not by any means perfect parents..far from it. I just wish that more parents understood that the young toddler years are prime years to “teach”. They are little sponges and eat up the attention. Almost every kid would be just as capable as ours to be learning things that our kids are learning. Imagine what we could do with our kids if they all entered kindergarten already knowing how to read and write. I think Darin and I having experience in the classroom and seeing how far behind some kids are just makes us that much more motivated to make sure we are just as involved in our kids’ education as possible.
And so goes my dilemma. How far ahead do I let her get? I have thought about homeschooling, but I just don’t have a heart right now for it. Zoe really doesn’t work all that well on a one on one intentional school setting. She has an attention span of a gnat some days. Plus, she absolutely loves the big group setting. She talks all the time about how much she misses school. I hate to take her out of that kind of environment if that is what she thrives in. Arkadelphia has a very small homeschool coop, but it’s VERY small from what I hear…it might be different if we homeschooled in a big city that had a big homeschool group that got together regularly. Another thought is that if we homeschooled, at some point she might go back to school, and we’d have to deal with the boredom issue again. I’d rather deal with it early on than as a teenager.
Anyway, here is a video of her reading. She wanted to show her grandparents...and whoever else would watch. :)
