Teaching Reading

Teaching reading has been the scariest aspect of home education. Reading is the foundation to a life long education. I was so glad my oldest who was public schooled through the end of 3rd grade was already an avid reader. My youngest had a good grasp of letters, their sounds, and a few sight words due to an excellent pre-K and Kindergarten program, but he wasn't a reader.

PHONICS

I stressed about every aspect of teaching him to read. I worried that I'd push to hard and make him hate reading. Or that I wouldn't push hard enough and that he still wouldn't be reading by the third grade. I flipped through so many programs trying to find what worked for him.

We started with AlphaPhonics which was easy but he was only reading lists of words. Also, I didn't feel it gave enough guidance to the parents to advise the student.

I added Bob Books to the AlphaPhonics and he loved them. They were easy to read and he felt accomplished with these little readers. They also progress from beginning readers to advancing readers. They have sets that address word families, complex words and long vowels. We are still using this series and at the time of this posting on Set 3, Word Families. We usually read about one book a week from this series.

We dropped AlphaPhonics (keeping the Bob Books) and went searching for something that actually taught phonics. Our Homeschool Buyers Coop had just acquired Explode the Code Online for half off. It was a good deal, I liked the idea of removing myself from the mix, and what kid doesn't like playing on the computer?

Well, as it turns out, that would be my kid. He loves games but anything educational, he prefers pen and paper. So I found an Explode the Code workbook at the same level he's at online and he's been whizzing through it. I still feel the program needs more "reading" practice than what it provides though. So, I went on the hunt again!

I came across some used readers from Abeka and thought they would make a nice addition to his phonics program. These have actually became quite handy because they actually teach the phonics rules.

Abeka's Handbook for Reading provides "charts" of phonics sounds. I bought this series used for about $1 a book and was planning on only using the readers as supplements However, after looking through the Handbook I realized this might be beneficial. I usually review a page or two a day, depending how frustrating it is for my son.

The readers are leveled and have colorful pages. The stories are cute and my son has found some of them rather funny. It is definitely encouraging for him to know he read a whole story by himself.

Because we are implementing Charlotte Mason's principles we do keep our lessons short. He usually starts with 2 pages in the Explode the Code workbook, one page with written work and the other is usually circle the right word. We count the written work as his copywork because it is quite a bit of writing. After Explode the Code, he reviews the current chart we are working on in the Handbook for Reading and recites the phonics rules he has learned thus far. We wrap up phonics by reading a couple pages out of the Abeka reader. Its a system that is working for him.

His reading is getting stronger everyday but I also wanted him to experience free reading. Finding suitable free reads has been a challenge in itself. I will cover those in the next post.