In the last ten months Little Fox went from learning that M/m says “mmm” to reading Magic Tree House chapter books. We have so much joy witnessing the progress of her reading! And so let’s delve into how we made it happen.
Step One: Reading Readiness
This step took a lot of patience. Waiting for Little Fox to be ready for reading lessons. The two criteria for readiness are as follows:
- Knowing the alphabet
- Being able to recognize the weak vowel sounds (a says ah, e says eh, etc)
- Note: we used the Ordinary Parent’s Guide for Teaching Reading to guide us through teaching the vowel sounds.
From the time Little Fox learned to sing the alphabet, I checked in with her every three months to see if she was ready to start reading lessons. And for about a year or so after that, she wasn’t. Finally, in January of 2022, we did the readiness check again. We went through the first five lessons of the Ordinary Parent’s Guide for Teaching Reading.
This was probably the fifth or sixth time we tested her ability to retain these lessons. So when they finally stuck, I really appreciated the effort and ability it took for Little Fox to learn the letters.
Step Two: Learning Basic Phonics
The next step, after realizing Little Fox was ready to retain letter sound information, was to continue on in the Ordinary Parent’s Guide for Teaching Reading. We kept going through the lessons, learning each of the letter sounds for the consonants. We did not go at the pace of a lesson a day. Sometimes it would take two or three days for a lesson to stick in her memory. But by this point I knew that it didn’t matter how long learning the next sound took. Because she was ready for the instruction, and patience and persistence were the keys for continuing.
At this point we could have introduced Bob’s Books to her. You only need to know four letters and sounds to read the first of those books (A,M,S,T). However, I wanted to get through the whole alphabet before working on blending sounds/reading words. And I do not regret this approach.
Step Three: Sounding Out Words
After completing the alphabet, we began the lessons involving sounding out words. I believe an, ad, and am were among the first words Little Fox learned to sound out.
This is when I introduced Bob’s Books to Little Fox. Oh the delight of seeing her sound out the words in her ve
ry first book (Mat). The first readthrough was a struggle, though not an unhappy one. She was so excited she sounded the words out that she read through it again! And the second time she didn’t struggle as much. And the third time she was really confident.
I almost miss the days where she took a long time to struggle through sounding out words. The effort and success are so beautiful to witness!
Besides practicing sounding out the words in the Bobs Books early readers, we continued the lessons in the Ordinary Parent’s Guide for Teaching Reading. This provides sufficient practice in the weak vowel sounds and most common consonant sounds that is the basis of most early phonics readers. However, the reading in the lessons started to feel long and burdensome to Little Fox, and the book began recommending the review of two lessons in addition to one new lessons a day. Whereas doing half of one lesson was more appropriate to Little Fox’s reading confidence. So I decided to add review in another way.
Step Four: Adding in Reading Review
So, once we reached the lessons with letter blends in the Ordinary Parent’s Guide for Teaching Reading, I began adding books from a Catholic phonics program for reading practice. This was so amazing for Little Fox.
We started by adding one or two pages of the Red Little Angel Book as the review portion of Little Fox’s reading lessons. Little Fox loved this! There are colour pictures and many religious themed images and words. This sparked Little Fox’s interest in a way that had been lost in the current length of Ordinary Parent’s Guide for Teaching Reading lessons. In fact, after getting into the second Little Angel Reader, Little Fox was ready to do a full lesson a day in the Ordinary Parent’s Guide for Teaching Reading. Because the Angel Reader built up her reading enjoyment and tolerance for trying to sound out longer stories!
Another bonus to this method was that the Little Angel reader teaches phonics in a different order than the Ordinary Parent’s Guide for Teaching Reading does. So this helped her learn or be exposed to some more letter sound rules so that they wouldn’t be as challenging when they came up in our core program.
The Goal: Third Grade Reading Level
We are now over halfway through the Ordinary Parent’s Guide for Teaching Reading. And, because of our work in the Angel readers, a lot of the lessons are reviewing sounds Little Fox has picked up the reading skills for already. So it kind of balances each other out. If she is learning a new phonics skill with the Angel Reader, the core program may be reviewing that or another skill she has already picked up.
Recently, Little Fox picked up the Magic Tree House books off our family bookshelf. So far she has reached the sixth book in the series. These books are written at a second grade level. And though she might not have the phonics skills to read every word in the book herself (like the dinosaur names), she is able to comprehend the majority of the story and relate details of the books back to us. So that is amazing! But we aren’t quite ready to send her off into the world of reading on her own yet.
The Ordinary Parent’s Guide for Teaching Reading book is very thorough. When we finish it, Little Fox will have all the reading skills for beginning a third grade reading level book. And so this is our goal!
Additional Reading Practice/Reading For Fun
Our reading lessons can take from 15 minutes to 30 minutes a day. However, Little Fox is given many more opportunities to practice her reading skills. She has half an hour of reading time before her nap, and access to books throughout the day.
Aside from the Angel Readers, we have purchased (or been gifted) other phonetic books and early readers for her to practice her skills with.
- Bob’s Books
- All About Reading Readers (Level 1: Cobweb Cat, Level 2: What Am I, and Queen Bee, Level 3: Chasing Henry, and Shipwreak, Level 4: Heirloom Antics, and The Voyage)
- National Geographic Readers Levels 1, 2, and 3
- Step Into Reading Levels 1, 2, and 3
- Berenstain Bear Books
- Seuss books
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I’m just getting started on this book with my 4 year old. It’s very encouraging to hear how well it worked for your daughter! Thank you!
Awesome! I am also using it with my 3 year old now, who was an early talker (as opposed to my first, who started talking late). We still need to go slow for starting early but it is going well again! Although I am not consistent about how often we do the lessons which might be the real reason we are going slower haha.