Elena 
One of the biggest challenges I have faced as a homeschooling mom has been teaching my children to read, without having them hate it! I will admit with my first son, I was so afraid that he would never learn to read, that he really did come to hate our reading lessons. A week or so ago I reposted an article I wrote about the problems I had teaching my first son to read. He still struggles with reading and I don’t think he will ever be a recreational reader, but he does read things from time to time that he is very interested in, and he did pass his written driving exam with a score of 100% I know then that he can read well enough to function as an adult in the world.
“>100 Easy Lessons to Teach Your Child to Read
I started all of my children out with 100 Easy Lessons to Teach Your Childto Read, because I like how the program flowed and incorported writing, yet it was definitely affordable and easy to use. This book boasts that the child will be reading at a second grade reading level by the time you complete the book, so I think around lesson 50 or so it starts pushing and advancing a little too fast. At least that was my experience with my own children.
We then we switch over to Pathway Readers and Workbooks. Dr. Holinga, our reading specialist, likes those books. The stories are engaging and they have a high frequency of repeating the newly learned words. The workbooks are fun too.
With two of my other children, even these books needed to be slowed down a tad. With Sam, my second son, it seemed that he was stuck at one level and not ready to move on when the Pathway reader stories got harder. Luckily I had a set of Moore McGuffey Readers from a yard sale, and I put him in those for a while until I had enough confidence that he was ready to move on. He is now an excellent reader in the 8th grade and can read whatever he wants.
My 7 year old daughter has been a special challenge. When she was 4 years old she fell at the pool and knocked her four top front teeth out. That affected how she learned to pronounce things like F, TH, SH, S, V and other sounds. Try to talk without your top teeth!! It’s tricky! I think something also that made her tongue weak, or confused because she makes the T sound instead of K or Guh. I definitely think speech therapy is in her future. Nonetheless, I think (and Dr. Holinga concurred) that it probably also affected how she sees and hears sounds and thus her reading. We were almost done with the Pathway Primer book last fall, but I noticed that she was guessing as much as she was reading, so this fall I took her right back to the beginning of the book and am also having her do a lot of copy work with making the sounds. It’s clicking with her more and more so I think we are on the right track.
Interestingly, my oldest son and my daughter both had rather dramatic births. My daughter especially had very low APGARs as a newborn and I wonder if that too might have affected their reading ability somehow.
My two sons right in the middle are not having any problems at all with reading.
We also are reading together a lot and did a lot of books on tape in the summer time. I think that helps them decide how they want to sound when they are reading. Noah insists on giving every character a voice. I am certain this is because of the influence of Mr. Jim Dale
who does such a wonderful job narrating the Harry Potter books.
At this time I have baby Rosie who is only one. I hope that she can reap the rewards of having a more experienced homeschooling mother when she is old enough to learn to read. I hope to start her out now though with a love of stories and books! Hopefully by the time I get to this sixth child, the reading adventure won’t be so wild!
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