Читать книгу Homeschooling For Dummies - Jennifer Kaufeld - Страница 82

When do you teach a child to read? If he asks you to teach him, then do it. I made the mistake of putting my young daughter off for six months because I thought she was too young to read. Actually, all I did was underestimate her ability to trudge through a project until its completion (now I know), and deny her six months’ pleasure reading time. Bad mom. No biscuit.

Many books promise to teach your child to read. All you really need is access to a public library and a list of the various phonics rules that you can find in the back of the book Why Johnny Can’t Read by Rudolf Flesch. Regardless of what the educational theory of the week may declare, reading happens when you apply the sounds of words to the symbols that we call letters. Some children figure it out on their own, while others need to be shown the code.

If you want a more organized program, you probably want a reading curriculum. Here are a few tried-and-true teach-your-child-to-read programs on the market.

 Alpha-Phonics: Alpha-Phonics lays out what children need to know in daily lessons. When you and your child finish this book, your child can read. I used this to teach a 3-year-old to read. It worked great — when we were finished 128 days later, he could read all kinds of things, like the headlines of all the tabloids in the grocery checkout lane. Oops. Available from Amazon and booksellers.

 Sing, Spell, Read, and Write: A popular program among homeschoolers, Sing, Spell, Read, and Write uses a raceway game, readers, and phonics songs to teach reading. After you learn these songs along with your children, you’ll never forget them. Years later, we still periodically break into rousing choruses of “a-a-apple, b-b-ball” for no apparent reason. Available from most homeschool suppliers.

 Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons: Based on the DISTAR reading approach that was popular in the 1970s, this book starts by teaching a modified alphabet that includes a symbol for each phonetic sound you hear. The student then learns to read with this alphabet, and it transitions into the normal alphabet by the end of the book. Many homeschoolers love this approach, and it works for them. Some children stress out about halfway through the book. Available from Amazon, homeschool suppliers, bookstores.

 Ultimate Phonics Reading Program: This program promises phonics, and it delivers phonics. With no frills or added gimmicks, this Macintosh and Windows software (as well as an IOS and Android app option for mobile devices) teaches reading in 262 lessons. Pausing the mouse over a word or letter combination reads it aloud to the student. Includes ten-day free trial; purchase from the website (www.spencerlearning.com) or your favorite app store.

I have a houseful of voracious readers. My children read two or more hours per day for pleasure if I don’t find other things for them to do. What created this love of words isn’t necessarily that the children’s parents are authors — it’s that the children’s parents are readers. We each try to steal away for a while each day and immerse ourselves in a book, whether the book is nonfiction for interest or research, or fiction for enjoyment and escape.

When the children were little, we instituted a 7:30 p.m. bedtime rule. Bedtime occurred at 7:30 p.m. with no arguments. The only exception was if the children wanted to read in bed. Then they still had to go to bed, but their lights-out time was extended to 8:30. This gave them a fair amount of time to immerse themselves in books, relax a little before trying to drop off to sleep, and pursue our goal of building good readers.