Learning to Read

During our homeschool journey, I have taught my four children to read, although I would use the term taught rather loosely.  As anyone who has taught a child to read should know, a significant amount of being able to read is exposure to language, conversation about what is being read, the child being  ready and interested in learning to read, and then the child actively engaging in the decoding process that is reading.

With my children I have basically taken the philosophy of reading to them more or less from birth, with the exception of Willow, who as the oldest, probably had stories read to her from 2ish.  The others, all being younger, simply got to join in when there was a story.  I distinctly remember reading all sorts of kids classics to the older two kids, whilst breastfeeding Arden in bed, or sitting on the floor with him, and then again doing similar sorts of things later on when Irving was born.

Willow was gradually getting the idea of reading, via our Steiner approach to exposure to letters, drawing and modelling them, and making shapes with our bodies, when we had our first moderator meeting in Adelaide.  The moderator came and told Willow about the MS Readathon.  Willow was very keen to get involved, and in about 6 weeks time she had completely worked out how to read and was onto reading things like Enid Blyton and Rainbow Magic.  She was 7 and 1/2 when she got it.

Willow reading Harry Potter

Gabriel was much dreamier, and he wasn't in a hurry to read.  He kinda looked like he was reading much of the time, if you didn't know him, but he was particularly engaged with the pictures in the books that he was interested in.  So it became a natural transition for him to go from reading the pictures of comics like Asterix, and TinTin, to one day reading them.  He was 9 and 1/2.

Gabriel reading Games Workshop

Arden was keen to read in a similar manner to Willow. I had learnt a bit more about the process of learning to read by the time I was assisting his development in understand, and I noticed just how much he was memorising what we were reading.  I had discovered by this point, that one of the developmental steps in learning to read, was to memorise what was being read.  With the older two, I suspected that I hadn't really noticed this process, because I was also memorising some of their picture books, because they liked to read a few specific ones over and over. (I can still partly recite "The Gruffalo"!)  Arden had a different selection of preferred books, and a wider rotation, perhaps because we had more books by the time he was born, and so I really noticed him passing through this stage, and then I noticed that he had particular words that he knew.  I remembered this from the older kids, and from my own journey learning to read.  And then one day, also at 7 and 1/2 like Willow, he worked it out.  He used to spend a lot of time reading these kids Encyclopedia books that we had that the kids called "The Question Mark Boy" books, because of a picture on them all.

Arden and Irving with some worksheets.

Irving has always been interested in physical objects, and constructions and how things go together much more than the others, and possibly because of them he was also interested in non-fiction books from the beginning.  Similarly to Gabriel he would look through comic books regularly, and also non-Fiction books with picture instructions, and he liked to read the kids encyclopedias  regularly too.  He followed a journey somewhat similar to Arden's, and worked out how to decode the alphabet by 8 1/2.

Irving and Willow reading together.

I always found it curious that all of them were half way through a year, when they worked out how to read, I kinda wondered about that.  I myself remember working it out about 6 and a half.  I remember the slow, strained feeling of trying to understand, and then one day feeling like a light had gone on, and I simply had it.  From there I seem to remember devouring picture books for about 6months, before graduating to things like Enid Blyton, and later Roald Dahl.

I think the lightbulb moment is in itself something so important for adults to remember when "teaching" reading.  That it is the child's journey of processing, and that when they are ready, it will simply happen and be easy.  I learnt from a homeschooling friend, around when Willow had first learn to read, that the normal age range for kids to begin reading was 2yrs old to 13yrs old, with most kids being in the middle, at about 7yrs.  With the education model  being so strongly driven towards learning via reading, being at the late end of that curve would be traumatising.  Our homeschool friend, whose older 2 children attended school, were at the late end of the curve, and it was only her youngest, who was homeschooled the whole way through, who developed a more constructive relationship to reading.  

I tend to wonder if the children who learn to read later, have tend to be later speakers, but I haven't had the inclination to investigate further.  I know that has been the case in my family.  I also know that because we value more modes of learning, that we haven't hurried people to read.  But we haven't taken a completely natural learning approach either.  There are so many other ways to learn, and school only really focuses on the intellect.  I remember my Mum telling me, that aged 3, she would get me to select casettes for her,  I couldn't read, but I could correctly identify all the casettes.  I've always been interested in geometric patterns and art, and I came to the conclusion, that I must have been recognising the patterns of the shapes.