Early Readers

The book Mane read yesterday is called Top Job, Mom by Margaret Allen. It's book 3 of "Dr. Maggie's Phonics Readers" by Creative Teaching Press. Today Mane read book 7 called Click, Click. These are similar to Bob Books, but they're more colorful, and Mane very successfully read both books. By the end of book 7 she was even starting to sound more fluent.

I keep asking myself over & over if I'm approaching reading in the right way, or if I'm creating lifelong reading problems by pushing the reading issue. The philosophy of The Ordinary Parent's Guide To Teaching Reading is that kids need to practice reading every day, and, though they may not like it. It's like any other thing we make them do for their own good - like eat vegetables & take baths. In some ways I agree. It's difficult to learn new skills, and often the practice isn't a while lot of fun. The pay-offs come later. On the other hand, reading is something I'd like Mane to do for pleasure, and if it's just a big struggle all the time, it isn't going to be pleasurable. I guess I'm afraid that if I make a big deal of it, she won't ever learn to read well because she'll view it as something difficult. If she could get to the point where she's reading really well, then reading would have its own rewards.

Anyway, we've tried Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons, but that quickly got very boring. They also use a lot of scripting (for the teacher), and a lot of symbols to cue the child on how to pronounce the letters. I don't want her to have to un-learn symbols and stylized writing in order to read real books.

We've read a lot of Bob Books, too. These are fantastic, truly wonderful. The stories are cute and funny. Mane started digging in her heels about reading them, though, when they got increasingly harder.

The books she read yesterday & today are very, very easy - also very fun and colorful, which is something she's been missing in the Ordinary Parent's Guide. She is, of course, so happy and proud when she feels successful. I'm wondering if I shouldn't let her just really master some easy-peasy early readers, and then move one at a time extremely slowly to a higher skill level.

The thing is, she is learning from The Ordinary Parent's Guide to Teaching Reading. The practice and repetition are good for her. It's just as boring as 100 Easy Lessons, but I like the format better. The stories are also typically kind of funny, though they have no pictures. Mane is easily distracted by pictures, but they also help string her along when she's trying to read.

Perhaps the answer is just that I have to keep a lot of variety going. Mane is very kinesthetic. So, any games we can play are extremely helpful. I think I might move to teaching her new reading concepts with the magnet letters, using the Ordinary Parent's Guide as my "guide." I like having something to tell me what order to introduce new concepts, but maybe I need to back off on having Mane read from the actual book and focus more on fun and interesting things she can read, along with some games and such. I have to keep the balance of reading practice and actually having fun...