This is the last of my three basics. Books are the foundation and strength of my homeschool. Years ago I joked that no matter what was going on in life my mom had a book recommendation for you. I am now that person and have to control myself to not overwhelm people with unsolicited book recommendations. Luckily I have lots of kids who go through lots of books which provides me with the opportunity to constantly be searching for the perfect book for lots of different personalities and reading abilities.

Teaching a child to read is a daunting task! One that sounds exciting until you get in the thick of it and then it can quickly become painfully monotonous and frustrating for you and your child. An important distinction to make, at this point, is that there is a big difference between teaching the mechanics of reading and raising a reader. Let me explain, in order for a child to read independently they must master phonics and recognizing words. This begins with learning the alphabet and is something we are working on throughout our lives as we tackle new topics (new jargon and lingo), new languages (how often do we read a book in a new country and are suddenly trying to pronounce names, places, foods, etc.) and such in our reading lives. But those first few years can be painful if we aren’t thoughtful about how we approach this subject.

First the nitty gritty of how I teach my kids to read. We will tackle this first to get it out of the way and because this is a question I get asked about a lot. My answers will be brief but I have more coming on this topic in the future as I teach my youngest to read. Once again the best curriculum is the one you will use. You have an overwhelming number of curriculums to choose from and every homeschool mom will tell you hers is the best. One of those homeschooling moms told me years ago that the best reading curriculum was The Ordinary Parent’s Guide to Teaching Reading by Jessie Wise. I have used this book with all six of my kids. I don’t love it but I’m not sure I would just LOVE any phonics book. I have tried other curriculums that looked like more fun and were flashier (more color) and I always go back to this book. The best part about it is that it’s all self-contained. All you need is this book and on occasion an item or two from around the house. Knowing that I just have to open the book and do the lesson greatly increases the likelihood that it will get done.

I do not use the The Ordinary Parent’s Guide to Teaching Reading by Jessie Wise to teach letters. The reason for that is pretty simple. Teaching letters is WAY TOO MUCH FUN to use a book. I love teaching letters and am truly sad that this school year will be my last time teaching letters to one of my kids. When I teach letters I choose a letter for the week and try to have one or two activities planned. I print a page with the letter on it to hang on the fridge or a bulletin board and then I let the magic happen. It is funny to see how aware the entire family becomes of a particular letter when it is hanging on the fridge. Suddenly everybody is noticing and pointing out things for the letter of the week. One week we are surrounded by things that start with M and the next week everywhere we turn we see the letter B.

When I say, I plan activities, I am not talking about elaborate expensive activities. Not at all! If this is feeling overwhelming dial down your expectations! For example if we are doing the letter L we might go to the library (this would be planned if I had a stack of overdue books and needed an extra push to get those returned), write a letter to a grandparent or better yet a cousin with a name that starts with L. One year my daughter sent herself a letter because she loved getting mail. For F we might have a fish snack (goldfish and Swedish fish), read a book about a farm and hang out as a family. I have also been known to let kids help with laundry for L, clean bathrooms for B and sweep the patio for S. If you clean the bathrooms for B and then bake brownies you have covered B.

Most years I pick up a workbook for my younger kids but I don’t require them to do the workbook. It is nice for me when older kids are working on school and the younger kids want to be involved if I have a workbook ready to go. Some years we go through multiple workbooks in a school year and other years it doesn’t get used at all. Until they are about 7 I let them decide if they want to do school work out of the workbooks.

When the kids have a firm grasp of the letters and what sound they make we move onto basic reading skills. I use The Ordinary Parent’s Guide to Teaching Reading by Jessie Wise three or four days a week. Jessie Wise discourages using sight words too quickly but I have found endless joy in seeing my kids recognize words as they are looking at books or listening to me read to them. I point out sight words far more than Jessie Wise feels is appropriate. I also like having books that the kids can read to me for a few minutes. I start with level 1 of the Bob books and slowly move forward to other levels of Bob books and easy readers. I go very slowly and we might read the same Bob book over and over again because that child finds it funny and loves to read it to me. If they memorize it who cares! Reading magic is still happening every time they read the book to me. After struggling through a phonics lesson a child is reminded that reading is fun when they can fly through a book of their choosing.

I started teaching my oldest to read 17 years ago. He is now living out-of-state (after living in Africa for a year), working at a job he loves, moving in with roommates, attending college and living a life that is fun and exciting. He is doing all those things that I had hoped he would be prepared for when we started this homeschool journey together. I could not be prouder of the man he has become but I too often am filled with regret for mistakes that I made when he was young.

If I were to give any mom advice about teaching kids to read it would be to laugh together. Laugh at the pictures, laugh at our crazy English language, laugh at the repetitive stories and laugh that neither one of us enjoys the phonics lessons. I would have hugged him more and scolded less. I would have given him a fun treat after a particularly hard lesson. Some days I would have told him we were going to forget the phonics lesson and listen to our audiobook a little longer. I wish I would have seen the value of an extra hour outside on a beautiful day even if it meant a missed phonics lesson.

If you have the privilege and responsibility of teaching a child you love to read this school year remember that nothing (not even reading well) is more important than your relationship with that child. Reading will come in time and no awards are given to the earliest reader but the reward of teaching a child to read and then seeing them snuggle up with a book in his free time is one of the sweetest moments in life. And after years and years of you giving book recommendations nothing will be sweeter than the moment when they come to you with a book you just have to read.

Happy Reading!