I am somewhat of a connoisseur of beginning reading programs. It started when my daughter was two and magically knew all her letters and sounds. I figured she’d be reading in the blink of an eye – easy peasy. After all, her genius mamma taught herself to read before she turned four – it’s all in the genes, baby!
So I started checking out material on reading, read through the whole debate between whole language versus phonics, decided we are eclectic as with all things, and we started dabbling in reading programs.
Two years later, we are still dabbling in beginning reading programs.
Some programs last longer than others, but the little Miss inevitably tires of them after a while. And I allow myself to be swayed by all the wise who have gone before me, telling me not to force her – reading should be fun – she’s only 4, after all, and has years to learn. So I back off on the reading program. Until another cool reading program shows up and we both get all excited and dabble in it for a while. And then she’s bored again.
She KNOWS how to read. She demonstrates it whenever I pin her down with a headlock and limit her rations to bread (no butter) and water. She can spell “zookeeper” and other odd words at the drop of a hat. Hats drop seldom in our house, though. She quite frankly doesn’t care to read, though she will listen to me read to her all the day long.
Why am I telling you all this? Because we have a number of reading programs we’ve been dabbling into for review purposes, and I just want to set the proper backdrop for the reviews. Most of them would probably work excellently for a segment of the young population.
Please don’t be biased based on my little book-loving non-reader…
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1 comments:
I can totally relate! I struggled to teach my first son to read and started when he was almost 5. By five and a half, he was reading. His little brother who had been within earshot of every lesson gleefully read his first word a month or two before his fourth birthday. He stayed on his brothers heels all through their educating and often surpassed him. This frustrated my oldest.
I was determined to avoid such frustration by starting Amanda earlier. She, too, showed great promise but got confused by the vowels making more than one sound and gets frustrated or annoyed or distracted.
Just one more reminder that even though I've been a mom for 17 years, each new child puts me back to rookie status. They are all so different!
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