Home School Preschool
When you decide to teach your child to read, there will be many choices and decisions that you will have to make; when I decided to home school my son, and by extension to teach him to read, there are many things that I wish I had known beforehand.
It took me a long time in my experiment to get my son to read by himself and I could have shortened my journey a lot if I had known any of the following:
You need a reading system
There are already many reading systems in existence; each using a different reading method. Some use sight reading and others use phonics, most have themes to keep your child’s attention.
What I have learnt in choosing a reading method is that it must include both sight reading and phonics; and in the right order. Sight reading allows you to teach your child the many common words in English (words like their, I, the, people, etc.) that cannot be sounded out and phonics allows your child to read more complex words by themselves.
There are different levels and stages for using each method and it must be done in the right order; sight reading first then phonics. In this way you can easily have your child reading their first book within a month and reading entirely by themselves within a few months.
I wish I’d known when I started out that the right reading system is essential and that most reading systems are either phonics or sight reading based, so that there is always a shortfall in your child’s reading ability; unless you use a system that encompasses both methods at the same time. Read more