Tuesday, February 9, 2010

The Yellow Book.


My husband learned to read when he was two years old. Lucky for him, his mother kept good journals, so if you don't believe him, he has proof. The way his mother taught him to read was from a book called Teach Your Child To Read in 100 Easy Lessons. It works by teaching letter sounds & putting them together & a series of other activities that get them used to sounding out words until they are eventually reading. My son is now four & is finally getting into it. I purchased it when he was two of course, but he was never interested & would protest by standing on his head any time I tried to do it with him. F also has speech articulation problems, which I think is one reason he was hesitant at first, but now it is a great tool in helping with that as well.

We learn on average one letter sound per week doing 1 lesson Monday, Wednesday & Friday. The sound introduction lesson is always followed by a sound review lesson, & we usually try to make it fun on Fridays by playing some sort of game with the letter. If he is having a particularly hard time remembering a sound, I have him try to find as many of that letter he can for the entire day & tell me what sound it makes. How ever many he finds & can say without me reminding him earns him that many M&Ms. Works like a charm. Letter E is the 3rd sound they learn & was the hardest to conquer thus far. A friend of mine who is a student in Elementary Education told me that she learned that E is the hardest sound for children to learn & that they spend more time on that than any other letter. She didn't say why but I thought that was interesting. So don't be discouraged when you reach it! Get creative & it will happen.

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