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Molly's Money-Saving Digest for January

Enjoy This Wonderful 

E-Book Straight from the Heart

Take a look at what else we have in the Schoolhouse Store!  

Greetings!

Deborah Wuehler and family

We read to our children when they are babies and read their favorite book over and over when they are toddlers. We read aloud those good, exciting, wholesome chapter books when they are any age. We provide books on tape for children so they can listen while they are doing something constructive with their hands. We make going to the library a treat. We buy children special books as special gifts. We let them catch our spirit of loving to read and hope that they model our reading behavior. We teach them the mechanics of reading. After all of that, they are certain to be proficient readers, right? Not always--there are still those struggling readers out there whom we have exhausted, along with ourselves, with all our attempts.

Maybe it's developmentally too early (yes, sometimes 6 is too young, especially if the child is a boy), or visually, physically, or mentally hard for them to read. Perhaps they have a learning block or dyslexia (see Dianne Craft's excellent resources for struggling readers at www.DianneCraft.org) or are just struggling with too much, too soon. Sometimes new homeschooling moms want to make sure their young ones are learning enough and they overdo a good thing, making it hard for everyone when expectations are not met.  

One of my sons learned to read proficiently at 6 but would prefer doing anything else but reading for pleasure. Don't get me wrong, he read his required books, biographies, and classics, is an excellent language arts guy, and excels in comprehension, spelling and grammar. But give him a choice, and he'd rather do something else.

I have another son who worked through dyslexia troubles, took much longer to learn his phonics sounds, and had trouble with spelling and mechanics for years and years-all the way through high school, in fact. (His younger brother surpassed him in those areas, and we had to explain how God made each differently.) He eventually learned to read proficiently around age 9, but reading was a chore until he was 11 or 12, and then he found some wholesome adventure books at a homeschool convention and was hooked (Lee Roddy's series Ladd Family Adventures). He had a rough beginning but now loves to read.

So, good readers are not necessarily early readers and early readers don't always grow up to love reading. God designs each differently and gives them talents in areas as He deems fit for His purposes. We are all wired differently for different purposes.

It's important to get through those reading troubles because of the main reason we learn to read. Pray for wisdom and keep working at it. It's most important to develop a love for reading God's Word. When each of my children masters the basics of reading and can read Genesis 1:1, they get their very own special Bible. We all read the Bible every single day so that we will learn to fear the Lord. That is our goal in learning to read and our goal for all of life.

~Deborah

 

Hey from Gena 

Gena Suarez

Gena Suarez, Publisher of TOS     

~~~

According to the traditional school schedule, all children learn to read in first grade. If they don't or if they struggle, they may be assigned to the slow group and begin the process of being labeled as a special needs child. But what if that child is homeschooled, and what if he or she is yours? 

If you find yourself with a child who is struggling to learn to read, the first thing to do is have a thorough eye exam by an optometrist experienced in working with children who find reading difficult. You may find that the child simply doesn't see well or that he or she has a tracking problem that can be corrected with relatively simple exercises. A child who doesn't see well will often not realize that other people see more clearly, so will never think to tell a parent that the letters on the page aren't clear.   

Once physical difficulties are ruled out, assess the student's learning style. Does he or she learn best by seeing, hearing, or touching? Consider whether your curriculum is allowing the student to approach reading through his learning strength. If not, look for enrichment materials such as audiotapes or sandpaper letters, or another curriculum that may be a better fit.   

Consider also that children develop at different rates and ages. Some are verbally gifted and reading at age 4, while others are still sounding out words at 10 or 11. Boys may develop verbal ability later than girls, and kinesthetic and auditory learners often lag behind visual learners.   

The most important thing you can do to help struggling readers is to continue to read aloud or provide them with audiobooks. All children need to be deeply saturated with the words and ideas that come from good literature in order to build knowledge, vocabulary, critical thinking skills, and a love of story or a desire to find out more about something. For some children, it takes a lot of listening to books to build a strong enough foundation for reading, so make time to read or listen to audiobooks daily.   

Finally, if you have considered vision, learning styles, developmental readiness, and whether the student has an adequately strong word foundation and your student is still

Janice Campbell

struggling, you may want to consult a reading specialist or do some in-home testing to determine if there is a more complex problem. One resource is The Struggling Reader diagnostic and remediation system. Designed by reading specialists who homeschool their own children, this helpful program is available at http://www.thestrugglingreader.com/.   

Above all, don't panic. Don't allow your children to compare themselves and don't let the struggling reader hear you talking about the problem with others. Being embarrassed or made to feel slow or dumb can cause a child to feel that he or she hates reading, and that is a tremendous handicap to learning. Try instead to instill the love of story, and the path will be simpler. Rest assured that most children do learn to read, and as long as they've been read to, a later-than-usual start in reading does no harm.

~Janice Campbell

 ~~~