My own personal thing has been I recently found out I'm pregnant! Hubby and I have also had side business things going on, and we've been crazy busy with getting back into the school routine (and all that comes with it). But hopefully I'm back for good now.
Anyway, now it's on to the actual post for this week. LOL
First on to reading success is of course learning letters.
The alphabet is important and you can start working with your children on the alphabet early on. For my kids they both started learning at the age of two. With books, flash cards, games, etc. My oldest son learned all his capital letters with ease. The lowercase were a bit more difficult for him as he did (and sometimes still does) gets his b's and d's mixed up. But we've been told that's pretty normal. For him reading doesn't come as naturally. He has speech trouble and so pronunciation of words comes pretty hard. For this reason we got him a reading tutor, his school works on reading, and we work on reading at LEAST 30 minutes a night at home. I can't even tell you how greatly he has improved in just a year's time by doing this. And he's only been in tutoring for a few months. But working closely and constantly with your children is the key to success. Read them a book and give them the option to read it for you. Don't always expect your children to pick up a chapter book and read it to you right away. Every child is different and it's important to pick what level your child is at and not try to go way over-board. That will lead often to frustration and hate for reading. Lucky both my children love to read, and look forward to it.
My youngest son can already read some of the more basic words. He is 3 and knows words like: it, and, the, he, she, is, etc. He also knows all his capital letters, and most of his lowercase. He also needs some help with speech but mostly it hasn't affected his reading in a bad way. He just has trouble with his lower i's and l's getting them confused sometimes. But we are working on it, and just like his older brother he loves reading regardless.
We all spend about 20 minutes a day as a family taking quiet time to read also. It's not always easy to fit that in to our schedules. Sometimes we don't get around to all of us getting to read, but for the most of the week we try to fit that time in daily. We believe it's important for the kids to see us turn off the televisions, radios, computers, etc, and sit down with a book. In a technology filled world books can often go unseen these days. It's pretty shocking if you ask me but sadly true.
So after all my prattling my best advice is to work with your children daily on reading. After all we are our child's most important teacher. Start with the alphabet, go to sight words, beginner books, progress from those to your child's level as you go. Have your children help you read the books, let them read to you, have them express their thoughts on books. Let them identify with characters, explain the setting, tell their favorite parts, etc. Play word, letter, and even book games. (Pinterest is filled with ideas for these if you need some).
And eventually it will come. Be patient, make it fun, and your children will learn to love books. Even though my boys have some trouble they LOVE books. They love reading time, and they get really into it. It's wonderful.
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