A Reading Lesson

I haven't worked much on reading with Tigger. I've read several things on not pushing reading (like some schools tend to do) due to brain/visual maturity, especially for boys. Charlotte Mason also did not recommend formal lessons before a child was six. Although I still find her reading instructions a bit vague, I am trying to do gentle instruction and have taken some suggestions from others who've used her method a lot longer than I have. Here is one of the clearest explanations I've found.

We have been doing some pre-reading exercises though. He loves to rhyme words now. It took a little for him to understand the concept. He kept trying to give me words that started with the same letter. LOL Now, for the most part, he will rhyme correctly. Tigger is not a memorizer so still will forget the names of letters or forget what sound they make. I think his little brain is too busy. When he is trying to remember something, he sits and says the same thing over and over again trying to keep it in his head. Don't distract him during this time!

Lately he has been really upset when we have family study time or during meeting preparation about the fact that he can't read yet. He said yesterday that "When I learn to read, then I can read the whole bible and can learn about God all by myself."

It's time to teach the boy some formal lessons. So today we started with a very simple 5-10 minute lesson. I used the white board and presented 'at'. Then I simply stated "This is the word 'at'. Now watch what I'm going to do." I then wrote the word 'cat'. Well, once he saw how it worked, he LOVED it! We did 'at' words and then we did 'in' words. He's very ready for his next reading lesson tomorrow.

It will be a review of 'at' and 'in' and then I'll start on 'en' and 'un'.

How exciting! He gave me a hug and said "Thank you Mommy for teaching me how to read!". So Sweet! When Dad came home he had me write words on the board again so he could read them for Dad. I then wrote on the board (just for fun) 'The cat sat on a mat.' (Yes, I know, a very twaddly sentence.) He loved that too. I just told him the three words he didn't know. Then we changed it to 'The cat sat on a hat.' LOL

I guess the phonics tiles will be doing double duty for a while. I have those famous LeapFrog videos to review with him too. He'll be soooo excited!