My Emerging Reader

Every time I have tried to sit down and teach Tabitha to read from books others have used or I have bought or I have borrowed from the library we have gotten frustrated and I have backed off.  I have looked into "Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons," Progressive Phonics, and McGuffey Readers to show some of the different things we have tried.  What seems to really work for us is letting it come on the spur of the moment, naturally, playfully.  She knows her letters and their sounds.  We have been doing "letter of the week" for a year and a half now.  Though, if you have read my blog for some time, you will realize we usually take 2 weeks and sometimes a month to do one letter/sound.  Whether it is extra projects I want to complete or not enough time to do anything at all one week, we usually take more than one week.  Which at times bothers me, other times I just go with the flow.  Looking at the way our weeks go I can definitely say we will continue to be relaxed when it comes to our homeschool style. But I can't see fully unschooling because I need to have a plan/goals or I will flounder around.  I thought for sure reading would have to be a subject I need to have a curriculum for, but seeing how well Tabitha has been progressing when we just do spur of the moment learning, I can see how unschooling works.  Of course I have taken some ideas from what I have learned at the Montessori and plan to keep doing so.

On my last post I mentioned how Tabitha was reading simple phonetic words I typed out and was spelling words on her own and writing them.  I thought I would share the two videos I took of her doing just those two things this week. (As I have recently learned how to upload videos to You Tube and embed them in a post).  Unfortunately, I started recording after she was almost done.

To see what others are doing with their toddlers and preschoolers head on over to 1+1+1=1 and Homeschool Creations

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