Pecan Cottage Life: Teaching Reading

Teaching Reading...where do I begin?

Many years ago I taught a class of Kindergartners and first graders. Knowing what I know now, I feel sorry for each of those children. I was not a great teacher. I hate paperwork, and I am not naturally a very creative or imaginative person...which should be pre-requisites for working with that age group. Nevertheless, I like to think that what I lacked in technique, I made up for with love and effort.

Why do I mention this? I mention it because the school I taught at used ABEKA for their reading curricula. I LOVE ABEKA; but it was not what I used for my firstborn.

Some time after my very brief teaching career, we moved to Arkansas. When we first arrived, Aaliyah was only about 11 months old. Our reading program at that point was my reading to her daily. We spent hours at our local library and we received free books monthly through Dolly Partons Imagination Library program.
When we were ready for "real" school, I began to seek out options for our curriculum. I made it a matter of prayer because, of course, funding for the education of our 4 and 2 year old was not in the budget. While cleaning out the church nursery I found a set of Hooked on Phonics books. Later, I went to our local library and found that what I lacked, they had available for me to check out. Voila! Our reading program officially began with Hooked on Phonics and some alphabet flashcards from the dollar store.

When it was time for me to teach Cassidy how to read I had acquired some teaching materials as well as talked to some of my homeschooling friends. Teach your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons was the hot topic at the time. I LOVE Goodwill and resale shops. I found a copy of 100 Easy Lessons at one of them for $1.00, so I decided to give it a try.

It seemed to be working well. Cassidy was excited to learn to read and I noticed that Little Man (AKA Bubba, or Raymond DeSean) became curious as we read. I began to make sure he was near us while we worked on Cassidy's reading.

Time passed. I officially started Bubba on 100 Easy Lessons at 3 years old, but soon 100 easy lessons wasn't so easy...somewhere around lesson 60 it became a chore. By this time Aaliyah was using ABEKA and I had been introduced to Ebay. I ordered all the Abeka readers from K-5 to 5th grade for about $100 (some new and some gently used) and we switched everyone over to Abeka.

I have incorporated a few tips and tricks for (hopefully) helping my children become great readers. I try to combine the things we learned from all three of the methods above, and to incorporate a few things I've noticed that work well for us. Are you curious to know what those things are?

Here we go!

1. We learn letter recognition and word recognition simultaneously...with an emphasis on the vowels.

a.) I teach the 5 vowels first, then move on to letters which are
common in three letter words. (***Details below)

b.) Once they master their vowels, we begin to make words...even if
they don't know EVERY letter/sound.

c.) We sing our words instead of saying them. This helps them to
hear the word more easily instead of hearing "broken" words. I
sometimes use refrigerator magnet alphabet or alphabet puzzle

I created this to be used with the chips
just like the consonant map
pictured above and below.

pieces to spell words. Bubba likes to drive his toy car under the "road words" and sing
the sounds as he drives.

***A

This is Mr. A. Say, Hello to Mr. A! Mr. A likes to say (short a sound). Mr. A likes to say (short a sound). What does Mr. A say?
Say his favorite sound quietly.
Now say it loud!
Sometimes Mr. A wears a hat.
Sometimes he wears a smile. (Vowel marking symbols )
What's his name? (Long a sound)
What does he say? (Short a sound)

We are doing this right now with Rayanna. She is only 2; but she is holding books right side up consistently and running her finger under words as she "reads".

I continue by teaching them that every letter has a name and a sound, but vowels are special. Only the vowels get to say their own names in words. When two vowels are present I need to hear the name of the first vowel as you say the word.

Teaching Long and Short vowel words

My "n" book at the library
We focus on a problem sound
each week with
these books at the library.

Notice this word has how many vowels? That's right it has 2 vowels. What are they? Look at the first vowel. He is wearing a hat. That gives us a clue. He is going to get to say his name in this work. Look at the second vowel. The second vowel is sad. Why? He doesn't get to talk this time. He has to wait for a word where he is first in line in order to speak.
If the child does not acknowledge the 2 vowel rule, I ask them to count the vowels and remind them of the rule. I sometimes sit up extra straight and salute as a hint to give respect to the "Mr." (long sound) Vowel.

Below you will see pics of us using some of our reading tools.
1. Consonant mat
2. Vowel mat
3. Special sound mat (common blends, digraphs and diphthongs)
4. Red, white and blue discs
5. Alphabet manipulatives (abc magnets or puzzle pieces)
6. ABEKA books

Our read alouds in the morning. We just finished Prince Warriors and are beginning Charlotte's Web.
Aaliyah has chosen to continue the Prince Warrior Series.

7. Bob books
8. My "alphabet" books at the library (pictured above)