It’s been four months since I took on the task of teaching reading. My class is not a regular class of five and six year old kids. I started with twenty four, five and six year olds who were ready to read. They had already learned their letters and sounds and were ready to start putting it all together.

I hadn’t taught reading for a long time, and getting back into the groove of daily lessons was not a thing I was crazy to do. I’ve avoided the classroom in favor of the kitchen simply because the kitchen is way easier than the classroom.  I thought back to the teachers who had taught for me before, and like anything I do myself, I learned from their successes and their mistakes. I could have taken the easy route and done the workbook thing, but somehow, that was a life worse than classroom death, so I did something different.

In four months, I’ve written seven books for my kids based on like sounds. We took a classroom break when we did the play.

In the beginning, I put together a work bag that contains folders for work, notes and a parent calendar, crayons in a cheese box so there is some integrity to keeping them pristine…lol… a pencil and a sharpener, clay for strengthening little hands, a laminated writing strip and a marker, a name strip with their name printed correctly, a tablet of children’s handwriting paper, and lastly, the book…and laminated cards with all the words from the book. These building cards are so that tired hands can make sentences without writing them.

In four months, we have learned about 100 words, and we have learned to write a sentence. At first, I gave regular spelling tests, but then, because I am who I am, I thought spelling tests are a waste of time and energy…put your words to use by writing a sentence with what you know. If you can’t write a sentence, figure it out.

We have learned to really read. That pleases me to no end. It’s one of the three childhood freedoms that children absolutely need: toilet training, reading and operating a car. We don’t teach driving…lol.

Why have the children learned so quickly? It’s fun. If it isn’t fun, it’s not worth wasting time on. I say that pragmatically…these are VERY young children. They need to have fun and PLAY, and play is something that leads to completeness by way of learning. Fun teaches…it doesn’t simply exist…it’s a project…it’s a life bonus…it gives pleasure, but not like a mirror, like a run, like being able to say…”Oh, I get it, I can do that…and I can do that all by myself.

For homework over the past four months, I’ve left the learning up to the kids. I stepped in at one point and asked parents to make the kids use the word cards more, and that boosted the learning with a giant leap. They had, after all, a lot of tools, a lot of things they could choose from to do in the evening. Interestingly enough, they chose to do it.

What makes kids want to do this? Some of it has to do with the newness of it. You might say it’s the tool bag. It’s theirs…all theirs…like a present with new stuff… And  the books were readable without a lot of struggle. It’s easy, it’s quick and it’s not demanding, but it is retain-able even to a four year old. Primarily, it’s because parents like the program too. It does not take hours of homework. It takes fifteen minutes while mom is cooking, or assembling dinner. The child is mostly independent and the materials are cute, indestructible and contained….no mess.

Now what I am finding is that these kids can read anything I write, so I am moving over to very early readers just for the vocabulary words. I will be sending a book home with each child that allows him or her to “figure it out” and bring it back and share it when he can. There will, of course, be some human competition…that’s to be expected. Then the child can pick two words from his book to share with his or her friends. I will make word cards for them to keep with all the others. I’m thinking by March, I will not have to make word cards anymore, and they will be reading just about anything.

The other thing we will be launching is a new creative writing project because if you can’t write about what you have read about, you don’t really know what you’ve read! Since all those spelling tests that we wrote sentences for were actually fun for the kids, we will start to “journal.” Now I hate journaling because I think it’s narcissistic. So we will be creating a character to write about. This will allow a lot of dialogue and a lot of description. It will allow practice of handwriting, sentence structure, and word choices.

So, where to go from here? Well, it’s time for the little kids to start a reading program. Not sure how this is going to work, but because these kids are where the readers were last August..6 they need to progress. I’ll keep you posted.

In the meantime, great big kudos go to the children and their parents. It’s been a dream come true in communication skills!