Two of my earliest reading memories are practicing phonics with sandpaper cards my mom made by hand and reading Dick and Jane books aloud. As a child I loved this time spent with my mother. I’d scoot a chair from our dining room into the adjoining kitchen and “read” to her while she baked cookies or scrubbed the stove. Now as an adult I have a deeper appreciation, not only for the gift of reading she gave me from such an early age, but also how impressive her teaching skills were.
In the learning to read quest there are typically two camps: phonics versus sight. When I was working in speech therapy I remember many a heated battle in elementary school libraries over which method brought the greatest success. But my mom’s simple solution was both. The best part is that I didn’t even realize it until Luke cracked open the first of the Dick and Jane book a couple of nights ago.
He breezed through reading it. His little body bursting with pride as he turned to me and said, “I’m reading Mom! I’m actually reading.” The simple repetitive words and phrases allowed him to build confidence word by word. Since then he’s devoured the remaining books we borrowed and told anyone who’ll listen that he can read. Looks like it might have been more than coincidence that I was drawn to the Dick and Jane books. It also looks like another library trip is in order.
This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 14th, 2009 at 5:28 pm and is filed under Parenting, Reading. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
