Teaching Reading to an Accelerated Child

After having Chelsea, I just assumed that in order to teach kids anything, you have to invest every fiber of your being, and then some. Then along came my second baby, and he wasn't at ALL like Chelsea. It was soon apparent that he was a highly accelerated learner. 

When he was about 2 and a half, he came up to me one day and said, "Mommy, I am sad because I don't know how to read by myself. Will you teach me?" 

I thought he would give up the notion in a week or two, so decided to humor him and teach him any words he wanted to learn to read. At this point, he already knew all his letters and associated sounds from observing me working with Chelsea.

People always ask how long I spent teaching him each day. In addition to the typical 30 minutes of reading aloud I did with the kids, I would invest about 10-20 dedicated minutes of doing activities with him to teach him to read.

Letter matching game

So I started by showing him the names of our family, and any other favorite words he had. He LOVED villains at the time, so instead of learning the generic sight words, we learned things like "Gaston" and "Captain Hook". 

If he wanted to learn about alligators, we would get books from the library, trace words, make a craft and have him sign his name, all sorts of fun. Sometimes, it seems like people believe that learning to read is a chore. It is fun and exciting!!!

Since he already knew the sounds that all the letters make, I picked up some phonic reading books at a yard sale, and had him read those. The only problem we ran into with those was that they were so short and easy, he would memorize the book within one repetition! 

To combat the memorization, I would cover up the picture and flip randomly to pages so the story was out of order, and point to words to have him sound it out. We used the EyeQ Phonics to teach him how to sound out words, and learned all the "regular" sight words just by reading and pointing them out. 

I also made sure that books were very, very accessible. Yes, some books ended up mostly taped together, and a few ended up in the trash, but tossing $10 worth of used books in order for my child to learn that books are important was very worth it to me. 

And on that note, we would give books for every holiday/ birthday. When out and about, instead of stopping for ice cream, we would stop at the thrift shop and pick up a new book for a prize. All those just to show the kids that reading is valuable. 

We did reading games every day. His favorite was the flyswatter game. I would have cards placed all around our house, or taped onto the play structures at the park, and would give him a flyswatter/ sword. I would then call out a word, and he would race to swat the correct one. 

I really liked this game, because he was motivated to read and always had a LOT of energy, so this combined the two, and a multi-sensory approach is the best way to learn!

We also had the Super Why board game, and he mostly watched Super Why or Signing Time for his screen time each day, which both promote early reading. Any time we would watch a regular movie, I always turned on the subtitles. 

We would do rhyming games, puzzles with words on them, sing nursery rhymes, and read poetry, all which help reading skills. We would also make "word family" strips, so write "at" on a card, then have a paper to pull through and read cat, mat, vat, rat, pat, bat, etc.

We would make books about anything the kids wanted to learn about. We would draw pictures or stick down stickers, then they would trace the words I wrote down, and we would point out each word and say what it meant. 

We also would incorporate reading into any activity/ outing we did. When going to the zoo, we would bring along a scavenger hunt with all the words written next to the pictures.

Chelsea had independent work activities that I would also let Ryan use, and he loved to be timed to see how fast he could do everything right. 

Once he was able to read independently, I made sure to never stop reading to him, but when I read to him, I would ask more comprehension questions about the book. No point in learning to read if you don't understand it!

Maybe I am too tough on Ryan. After having Chelsea and drilling her with therapy every day, I expected Ryan to be able to work on something that was hard for him and not give up.

The funny thing about that is- when I tell people that I do therapy constantly with Chelsea, I get lots of "Wow, that is amazing! Good for you!!! She will really appreciate it later in life!" 

But when I say that I make Ryan work on something difficult for him at least half an hour to an hour a day (a fraction of the time I have Chelsea do!) I get comments like, "Aw, just let him just be a kid!" or "Preschoolers don't need to know how to sit and work yet. They learn all they need to through play."

My thoughts- HELLO!!! Reading and learning IS fun!!!! If reading and learning aren't fun, you must not be doing it right!!