I think this is one of the most exciting aspects of parenting- teaching your child to read. It really is like a light switch going on when things just click and start to make sense. Once the light is there, suddenly your child is telling you what a sign says, what the ad in the magazine is advertising, or how to make chocolate chip cookies.

No, Fuller can’t tell me how to make chocolate chip cookies. But he’s getting there!

It isn’t like Fuller just suddenly started to read, and it no he hasn’t completed the Harry Potter series yet. But he just sat next to me and read me three books. He didn’t do it gracefully, he stopped and got frustrated several times, but I sat there with a smile on my face and my heart puffed up with pride because he is reading!

There are several tools we are taking advantage of in teaching Fuller to read and I thought I would share what we have been using, in case you might want to try them.

The first tool I am sure you are already doing: read to your child. Now, we aren’t the type of parents who read to our child in the womb, or even in the first six months of his life, but we do read to him often. Damon and I have different methods of doing this. I read library books to Fuller and Damon reads comic books. Both have value and help us create our own special bond with Fuller.

Phonics is a key element to reading and the tool which gave Fuller his start with phonics was actually a gift from Aunt Vicki and Uncle Bobby*- the Leapfrog Fridge Phonics Set. At first it was just a letter recognition tool and then Fuller really understood the “A says Ah!” and so on. Fuller loved playing with it and listening to the different sounds. We eventually started playing games with it, asking him to pick out the different letters and telling us the sounds. At some point we got the expansion pack to teach him the lowercase letters. We still play with this some days, especially to review lowercase letters.

We also received as a gift (from Aunt Vicki and Uncle Bobby) the
Leap Frog Letter Factory DVD, which was a fun way to reinforce the sounds he had been learning via the magnets. He still asks to watch it today.

As a companion tool, and after a suggestion from Aunt Vicki, we also bought the
Leap Frog Talking Words Factory DVD. The important lesson Fuller picked up from this was how to sound out words. For some reason, when I would try and demonstrate how to sound out a word, it would get lost in translation. But the DVD helped fill that gap.

I think phonics is the foundation for learning how to read, but there are some words that when seen often enough are just learned to be read, without having to sound them out. These are generally called sight words and after seeing many bloggers review the DVD Meet the Sight Words, I put it on Fuller’s wishlist. He received it as a gift last birthday and after several viewings, he was able to recognize 50% of the words shown. He can now read all the words from the DVD. And I wish I had asked for the
boxed set, because he really picked them up fast. Instead, we are just scouring the internet for the various sight word lists to work on.

Last birthday Aunt Vicki and Uncle Bobby gave Fuller the first box of the BOB Book collection. Fuller liked to play with it and look at the pictures. Then one day he came to me and read the first two books out loud. Shocked and proud I pulled out the third book and we easily made our way through it, sounding out words and enjoying the fact that Fuller was actually reading. We have since developed a system where Fuller will read a book or two that he has already mastered and then read a third book that he is working on. Once I am comfortable with his progress on the third book, we then move on to the next one. We have three books left in the box, and Fuller is really excited to finish because it means he gets to go with me to the bookstore and buy the next box. And play with the train table at Barnes and Noble.

Like I said, these are just tools we have used in teaching Fuller how to read. And, I want to emphasize this has all been a Fuller-led endeavor. He started to pick out familiar words and would ask us how to spell other words. And since he figured out the first two BOB books on his own, we just kept going. Why make him wait? If he wants to learn now, we want to help him.

There is more to work on and even though Fuller reads some on his own, I still love cuddling up and reading a book to him.

*It is awesome to have a SIL who has older kids who also learned to read. A lot of these tools her kids used too, so I was happy to learn from their experience!

Technorati Tags: reading to your child, learning to read, reading tools, reading

Trackback URI | Comments RSS