Learning to Read

When my son was four he wanted to learn to read and was beginning to slowly work his way through the Bob Books, but was reluctant to work on many pre-reading skills. He hardly every drew or colored. When I bought him some coloring books he kept them in a nice stack and liked to look through them, but didn't want to start coloring them. I think he might have been worried about messing up the books or not drawing very well. This went on for a year or a year and half and I was getting concerned about his small motor skills keeping up with his interest in reading. As I began to see his interest in writing grow (just simple things like his name) it became evident that writing was very difficult for him. I finally picked up an plastic sheet of alphabet stencils at the local teacher's store. The sheets were 8 1/2" x 11". One sheet had upper case letters and one lower case. Matthew fell in love with these stencils and was so proud of how nice his letters looked when he wrote things with the stencils. It really helped him gain confidence and fine-motor-skill practice. It wasn't long before he started drawing and coloring too! (Alicia from WI)

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It's amazing how different each child is. With my first two children, a lot of their beginning phonics was done by studying phonogram flash cards when they were first learning to read. My third child, however, had absolutely no interest in this. All she wanted to do was write words on the chalkboards. One of the beauties of homeschooling is its flexibility and I was able to turn this toward my goals by having her write out a set of words each day with a common phonogram and have her practice making the sound of that phonogram (this also provided her examples of where that particular phonogram could be found. (Anonymous)