"Hooked On Phonics Worked For Me!"

I never thought I’d teach my 4 year old to read. There are a couple of reasons for this. I always figured, what’s the point. He’ll learn to read in K and 1^st grade with everyone else. Why learn to read before that? We love to read to Orin and do all of the time. Secondly, and this may stereotyping, but one of the reason’s a I think some mom’s teach their preschoolers to read is to satisfy that competitive need we all seem to have. The need to brag about what our kids can do and compare them to other kids. I’m not talking about a healthy dose of pride for our kid, but making ourselves feel better because they are “smarter” than other people’s. I definitely think it’s a temptation for all of us mom’s to push our kids to do things they aren’t ready for. You know, so we can say our kid is so smart because they potty trained at 2. Or making our kids learn to read early. I really try hard not to become a part of that. I want to let my kids be who they are without me pushing them more than necessary. Lastly, I seriously had no idea how to teach someone to read. I’m not a teacher and never had a desire to be one. One of my biggest worries about having to home school (if we choose/have to do so) was knowing where to begin when it came to reading. Every time I thought about how I would do it I would come to the conclusion that if it was only on my shoulders to teach my kids to read they’d never learn because I would never figure out where to start. (ok, maybe not that bad, but you get my point). Ok, that’s my disclaimer for the rest of the post. So, here we have Orin. A kid whose first love seems to be letters. At 15 months, before he could even walk, he would get letter magnet from the fridge, crawl over to us, ask us what it is (mostly by just pointing to it), we’d say, “A” and he’d crawl back saying “A, a, a, a” over and over, He’d do this with ever letter on the fridge. Weird, I know. We tried to encourage his interest with letter puzzles, etc., but it wasn’t like we were pushing him to learn them all. By about 21 months he knew the capitol letters. I’m sure that’s no incredible feat, but it’s sort of fun that it was his self motivation. Throughout the next couple of years he learned the lower case letters and the sounds. When we’d be driving in the car he’d love to just name a letter and we’d tell him the sound. Eventually we’d name a letter and he’d say the sound. So by last January, he really started asking to learn how to read. I figured he’d get over it and forget about it. But his interest continued and he kept asking. I was seriously thinking there is no way I’m trying to teach a 3 year old to read. But when he turned 4 in April and kept asking I figured I should at least try. As I said I had no idea where to start so I asked a friend who home schools how she taught her kids to read and she said, “Hooked on Phonics.” This was very surprising to me. I’d seen those commercials before but really didn’t know what it was about. But, I trust her so I looked at the website and saw that I could get the Kindergarten version for $25 so we decided to try it out. They have a preschool version but it teaches letters and letter sounds so I figured we needed the next one up. I looked at other books on learning to read. I got this one and this one from the library to supplement or use instead if we didn’t like the Hooked on Phonics. When we received it in the mail Orin was so excited. He couldn’t wait to start. I couldn’t believe all of the stuff it came with. A huge workbook with every lesson, a CD which guides us through every lesson (at least the first part of each lesson), sticker progress charts, 24 books for each level of learning, sets of flash cards and more. It even had a computer game which Orin loves. I figured a lot of that was just extras but as you go through the workbook you are told when to use everything. It’s awesome. The first lesson was making sure the child new all of the letters and sounds. After that we went to “a” and “t” is “at”. Then we added letters to the front of that, “bat”, “mat”, “cat”, etc… It took Orin a couple of days to get that concept, but since then we’ve flown. I wondered if he’d get sick of it after a while and his interest would die out, but I think he’s even more into now. Each lesson is pretty short so as we’ve gone through it we’re doing more and more each day. Sometime we do 3 or 4. We’re almost through the first book and his favorite thing to do is look at the brochure and say how he can’t wait to start “the red workbook” (our’s is yellow). I try to do it with him ever day during the week I make him take breaks on the weekends (it’s more of a break for me) although sometimes he convinces me to do it. On the way to Colorado earlier this month he asked if I brought it. I told him I hadn’t and he started crying and asked for us to go back and get it. Seeing that we’d been driving for 10 hours it was a little out of the question. It’s been fun to see the progression. At the beginning I couldn’t imagine him actually being able to read the books. Now he can read basic stuff like, “”This is lots of fun!” says Bob Hog.” and “At the log Mutt sees a map in a pot.” He’s still pretty slow when he reads. He sounds out a lot of words but we’re working on reading more smoothly. Although often when I asked him to read faster he just reads more loudly. So now, Hooked On Phonics is another one of those things I could talk about forever (along with Adoption and Cloth Diapers). So be careful if you ask me about it. :-) And Micaiah – well his passion is not letters. He’ll be three in September and he I think the only letter he recognizes is “O”. If you point to a number and ask him what it is he’ll say “P”. So, he’s going at his own pace too. It’s not like we don’t teach the child at all, but he’s still young enough that we can do things that he loves – like crafts, puzzles, etc… So I have a feeling that I won’t be teaching him to read when he’s 4. :-)