wish you more

Figuring out exactly how to teach my daughter to read has been tough. She’s a little over 4 1/2, and starting kindergarten in September.  She does attend preschool, and of course they learn letters and sounds there. But I wanted some tools to teach her at home.

After looking into different methods, I settled on the one I myself used almost 40 years ago, when I was learning to read.  I know it sounds like there has got to be SOME progress since then in the “ways to learn how to read” department, but I swear this one is working.

It’s a book called Let’s Read (I got mine from amazon, link here). I’ll admit it may seem a bit overwhelming at first – it’s quite large and has a gazillion pages. But, it’s set up in a very logical way.

The rhyming and word patterns seem to give my daughter some confidence, and she is thrilled when she works through a page. She regularly asks me when she’s going to be at “page 100.” We read for about 5-10 min before bed each night. That seems to be a good time of day for us when there isn’t something else she’d rather be doing.

One other tool we use are the BOB books (again, I got mine from Amazon, link here). These employ a similar concept – patterns and a gradual progression in level of difficulty. And my daughter loves the fact that she can hold the book and read the entire thing, front to back. She’s so proud when she finishes one.

Anyway, thought I’d share!