Learning to Read

I don't remember when I learned to read. I remember not knowing, then I remember knowing. I don't remember the process. I remember in Kindergarten learning about all the letters. They had inflatable letter characters and we did a new one each day/week/something like that. Where we lived, you had two years of Kindergarten, starting at age 4 instead of age 5. So I'm not sure which year it was.

You can't just sit down and teach a preschool-age kid how to read. It's a process. You expose them to words, letters, and books as much as you can. They learn to identify numbers and letters, sing the alphabet, then finally learn sounds and a few small words. That's where we're at with Julia. She can identify all letters, and write most of them. She can write about half of the numbers.

I'm having a hard time being patient because I know she's a bright girl and I'm excited for her to read books herself. We've chosen the Bob Books to start with because they are very simple. Julia knows quite a number of letter sounds, and she's read the first book a couple of times. We tried the second book, and she got most of the way through it. But she really isn't terribly interested in reading them very often. I don't push her, because I want her to stay excited about words and such. Learning shouldn't be a chore, it should be something to be excited about. Ed and I love to learn, and we hope our kids will keep their love of learning. That's a big reason why we're homeschooling. That and the fact that we think we can do better than our local school system. And many many other reasons. I'll go into them as time goes along.

Anyway, I know Julia will read eventually. I'm just overenthusiastic, I suppose. She's only 4 1/2.