Mistakes I Made With My Advanced, Early Reader
How to begin this without coming across as bragging? Perhaps I need to remind you that children are born persons. That abiding by your child’s personhood means that you are respecting when they are ready to learn. And to consider that all kids even out in the end and early reading is not a considerable mark of intelegance over other children.
On that note, I began reading lessons with my daughter when she was three. She was a motivated toddler and wanted to learn, so we began with Peter recognition and letter sounds.
Before she turned 4 she was able to read simple CVC words and had a list of sight words mastered. She worked her way through easy readers. By 5 she had progressed into chapter books. She’s currently 9 years old and has a relatively advanced reading level. Having an early, fluent, reader comes with a unique set of challenges.
I certainly made my own series of mistakes with my daughter in terms of her reading skills. These mistakes have had their own set of repercussions that we’ve had to account for and make adjustments to our homeschool in the third grade.
I dropped explicit phonics instruction too early. Once my daughter was reading fluently, I dropped teaching phonics. Since she had the skills to read and sound out words she didn’t know, I didn’t feel the need to continue teaching her phonics. What I neglected to remember is that lessons learned at 4 aren’t often retained at 8. As a result, my daughter’s spelling has slipped and we’ve had to make adjustments to correct this. We’ve gone back this year to phonic review with flash cards several days a week. It’s not a major time issue in our homeschool and gives her the confidence of reviewing the letter sounds, blends, and digraphs.
I didn’t live long enough in Fairy world: my daughter went through a phase where she loved to read the Rainbow Magic Fairy books. Some would call them twaddle. I’m someone. (but I’ve since changed my mind about twaddle). As her reading levels advanced, I encouraged her to continue choosing harder books. She did well with the books she was reading, but it did become difficult to find books that weren’t too old for her. Now that she’s older, she’s no longer interested in fairy books. While this isn’t necessarily a mistake, I miss the age of the rainbow fairy book, leaving them behind is a big reminder of how quickly she’s growing. Now, as long as the book has nothing too mature for her, I generally let her read what she wants. She gets a lot of living books and has a good head for choosing books she enjoys.
I continued with a spelling instruction technique that wasn’t working for my child. Since we follow a Charlotte Mason method we implemented a curriculum that modeled her techniques. My daughter didn’t do well with that and we ultimately had to change the way were handling spelling and copy work instruction. Had I not held on to the curriculum so tightly, I would have made adjustments and corrected the struggles earlier. This year we changed spelling curriculums and her skills have improved considerably.
Early reading did have some benefits for us. Because my daughter was an early reader, we were able to catch a vision problem earlier than I believe we would have had she not been reading. She was able to dive into a world of books that has spurred her imagination and inspired her in different ways, and she fell in love with a variety of genres. She could also read to her baby brother when he came home, that was incredibly important for her.
If you have an early and motivated reader, I wouldn’t recommend holding them back for the sake of not starting.As long as everyone is happy in their lessons, and you’re not manipulating your child to do school work, there are benefits to beginning school at and earlier age. However, if my son is early and motivated in his reading skills, I will continue phonics for longer than I did with my daughter.
