Teaching Your Child to Read

February 28, 2023

Teaching Your Child to Read

           

During my many years of tutoring, I worked with students from ages 6 on up into adulthood. Many of my students were in the 12 to 15 range. They still weren’t reading, parents had tried everything they could think of to help them, and someone gave them my name and number. The students I worked with were from a variety of backgrounds and learning issues. I was willing to try even though they didn’t always fit the “dyslexia” criteria. 


I would let the parents know that I would tutor their child for a month or two, and then we could re-evaluate to see if my methods were working for their child. If they did not see real improvement, they had the option to move on to something different. I didn’t do contracts like regular learning centers, and they only paid for lessons received.

 

One day I started with a new student and the first thing I asked him was what his favorite subject was. It’s interesting how many of my new students would say reading, but this boy did not. I think he liked recess the best. He then informed me that he was attending an immersion school, where half was in English and half in Spanish. He was very proud of that fact. So, I asked him if he liked reading and his reply was “I can’t read.” 


 “Can you read in Spanish?” I asked.

“Nope,” was the reply. “Can’t read in Spanish either.” “That will change,” I told him.


 If a child is dyslexic, it’s important that you stick to one language to begin with. Later you might try adding a second language, especially speaking it, and not trying to write it. Conversational Spanish, for instance, is much different than the grammar side of the language.


Another student I worked with was 12. He couldn’t read anything. So, we started with the beginning steps of “Hearing Every Sound,” and progressed to the alphabet and then the simple words. We were practicing making words with my wooden letter tiles, and I made the word Sam. He pointed to each tile making the sounds //s//a//m/ and put them together saying the word. 


“That’s my father’s name,” he said in amazement.

From then on, he started making progress. He had a reason.


Have you ever worried as a new homeschool parent that you may struggle to teach your child to read? If you have, you are not alone. Reading, along with math, can be the scariest two subjects to teach. I believe that’s because we all know the importance of our children being proficient in both. Some children just seem to pick up reading despite how well or terrible we might be as the teacher. But the good news is that if you know what to do, teaching your struggling student will still be successful.


First, it is essential that you teach your child to recognize each letter in the alphabet. Flash cards usually work, and there are also YouTube videos that teach the letters and their sounds. If you choose to use one of these videos, make sure that you watch it through and listen to how the alphabet sounds are made. Each letter sound should have a crisp sound. For example, the letter b should make the sound /b/ not /buh/. This is also true of many of the other consonants: d,f,g,h,j,k,l,m,n,p,r,s,t,v,y,z.


If a child learns to read adding the /uh/ sound onto each consonant, when they try to sound out a new word, it will be very difficult (/buh//a//tuh/). Put these 3 sounds together and you won’t come up with bat.

 

Next, it is helpful to start with 2 or 3 letter words that can be sounded out. Examples of this would include: cat, dog, big, etc., but not words like son, or put, because the vowel does not have the common short vowel sound. As you may have noticed, English has many exceptions to the rules when reading, so it is best to start with words that follow the most common rules about letter sounds. 


Third, you will need to address some of the most common sight words. The reason they are called sight words is that they cannot be sounded out. An example of probably the most common sight word is the. If we try to sound out the, we come up with sounds that make no sense whatsoever. So, sight words must be memorized if a child wants to read sentences and not just words. 


Remember…


Every child is different. There is no perfect way to teach them. We can try what we know should work, but if it doesn’t, we need to be flexible and try something else, because every child can learn. We just need to find the key to unlock their learning potential.


If you are ready to get started, visit the Store tab on my website and order Small Bites Book One, “Hearing Every Sound: Phonemic Awareness.” It provides 10 lessons of exercises for hearing every sound. It makes it simple for both the parent and student in Small Bites. You do not need to come up with the appropriate exercises yourself, saving you a lot of time.


Small Bites Book Two will be coming out soon and will deal with saying the alphabet correctly and reading words with 3 sounds, as well as the basic sight words to teach your child.


If you find this blog interesting and helpful, send it to a friend. 

How to Help Your Child Read with Word Games While Fixing Dinner

February 4, 2025
Many parents know that finding an adequate amount of time to help their children succeed in school is difficult at best. Having been a classroom teacher for more years than I care to admit, I know that as hard as the teacher tries to meet all of the needs of the students in her class, the students that seem to do the best are the ones whose parents are actively involved with their child’s education. So the big question is, “How do I find the time?” When I started teaching, I was not married and had no children. Life was not too complicated. As time went on life changed. With a husband and a child in the picture, I found myself dealing with the role of a teacher and a parent. My child needed extra help just like most other children. I started figuring out ways to help my child while we did other things. One of my favorites was word games. One doesn’t need to be a super multitasker to do these with their child while fixing dinner. Hence: Small Bites. This doesn’t take the place of sitting with your child one-on-one if they are really struggling, but it is a very useful way to keep your child thinking and learning while you are cooking. Game #1 “Rhyming Words” The beauty of this simple game is that it helps a child with reading sounds. If they can read one word with the end sound, it actually opens up a whole chain of words that they will be able to read by just changing out the beginning sound. Maybe your child’s job is to feed the cat, so let’s start by coming up with as many words as you can that rhyme with cat. Remember, they all must have the at sound at the end of the word. (Examples: bat, brat, chat, fat, flat, gnat, hat, mat, pat, rat, sat, scat, slat, splat, that, vat) If your child feeds the dog, then you can rhyme words with dog. (Examples: bog, clog, fog, frog, grog, hog, jog, log, smog) Goats seem to have become popular again. See how many words you can come up with that rhyme with goat. Notice that all of the words do not end with the same letters: oat and ote . (Examples: bloat, boat, coat, dote, float, gloat, moat, note, oat, quote, smote, throat, tote, vote, wrote) Since I’m on a roll with animals, how about words that rhyme with pig. (Examples: big, brig, dig, fig, gig, jig, rig, sprig, twig, wig, zig) Game #2 “Sounds to Words” This game is intended for beginning readers who are working on putting sounds together to form words. Start by giving 3 or 4 sounds such as / d // o // g /. Have the child repeat back the 3 sounds and then put them together to make the word dog . Obviously, the words are endless, but I’m giving you a few so you can concentrate on fixing dinner. / f // u // n / fun / h // a // t / hat / r // a // t / rat / m // o // m / mom / d // i // g / dig / j // u // m // p / jump / s // w // i // m / swim / r // e // d / red This game can be played until you or the child are tired and want to stop. Sometimes when you are doing word games, it’s better to keep them short, especially at the beginning. The length of the game is totally up to you. Game #3 “Geography Chain” This game is better with children who are a little older, and was one of my family’s favorites. Acceptable answers include the names of: countries, states, provinces (Canada), cities, etc. Set the rules of what’s acceptable before you start. Start with the name of one of the above categories such as: Spain . Because Spain ends with the letter N , the next geographical place would need to start with the letter N , such as New Mexico . This ends with an O , so the next response might be Ontario . Another location that starts with O could be Oregon . We could use New York and so on. Take turns and when someone cannot think of a place to continue the chain, they can drop out if more than 2 are playing or you can start over. Another chain might look something like this: K entucky, Yemen, Nigeria, Alaska, Antarctica, Alpine (city), Escondido (city), Oklahoma, Arkansas, etc. As you can see, many places end with an A or an O . It is helpful if you try to think of places that don’t end with one of these letters. Word to the Wise These untimed interactive games work well for learning math facts also. Through my many years of experience, memorizing addition facts, subtraction facts, multiplication facts, and division facts are a major key in being successful in math. Memorization of multiplication facts are the most important. Without actually memorizing these, all other math becomes tedious and frustrating in elementary school, and we want are kids to love math without the frustration that it can bring. When I have had kids in my classes who are totally frustrated with math, the main cause is not learning multiplication facts by the end of 3 rd grade. If your child is past 3 rd grade and they have not memorized these facts yet, do not despair, it’s never too late to work on this skill.
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