One of the greatest joys I get as a parent is reading with my kids. I am not sure what I find so fulfilling about it, but I do thoroughly enjoy each moment. It is sad that she will be learning to read by herself soon. Even though I want to hang on to these moments, my wife and I have been working with her to read more on her own.
For starters, I think we have built a pretty good foundation with my preschooler. As we read to her over the years, we would point out certain words (mainly sight words) and have her memorize these early. She has been on the Leap Frog LeapReader books as far back as I can remember. We were so proud of her when she read us one of these books without any help.
Now that the ‘See Spot Run’ era is coming to an end, it is time to start getting her to read something more challenging for a child getting ready to enter school. So far we have had marginal success with our efforts, but I am certain we are on the verge of a breakthrough.
As we have been reading her stories at night, we point at each word like a human karaoke machine. I did not think she was even paying attention, but if I forget to do it she lets me know.
The next step has been to stop in the sentence and have her try the word for herself. She does really well here can do most words. Her only problem is that she will “guess†a bunch. Most of the time, these guesses are spot-on, which is good because she is displaying an understanding of the context.
However, these guesses are bad because she is not actually trying to read. To combat this, we have some level one books with only a few pictures and have her try with these. This strategy has been working well and she is really catching on.
She is slowly completing sentences and has read a whole page on several occasions with minimal help from us. We have also made it exciting for her to read to her little brother and she loves every second of being the big sister.
Teaching our children to read is a labor of love and it is not something that happens overnight. There are so many opinions and strategies out there and these are the ones that have worked for us. Even though I do not want our reading sessions to end, it is very rewarding watching her start to take the reins on her own.