Teach Young Children To Read

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Learning to read can be a very exciting time, and it can also be very intimidating for the young child. Recently, I had a discussion with a young mother about teaching her young children to read. She is an awesome mother, and has chosen to educate her children at home. Once that decision was made, she set off searching for the 'right' curriculum. As she combed through one after another, she ended up with a pile of many things that looked good, but still had no answers in sight. She was so very frustrated by the end of her search, and even more confused than when she began, that she became convinced that she cannot teach her child to read. My heart went out to this mother so I decided to address it here. In teaching a young child, there …show more content…

Their senses are coming alive, and ours are going in the opposite direction. You and I might walk across the yard and see the toys left in the yard and hear a siren in the distance; whereas, our child may hear the birds and smell the lilacs in the air and not notice the toys OR the sirens. We are in two different places in life and our focus has changed due to life circumstance. Believe it or not, most children are right-brained from the beginning. Meaning, they bond with and are sensitive to the "gestalt," a German word meaning "the whole." We in our busy-ness and our all important distractions, force children into the parts. We load them up with too many details and expect them to come out seeing the whole, but WE are the tool which distract their focus as God created them to be. Taking all of this into consideration, let us get back to the simplicity of the child's motor functions. Strip away all of the many choices and take it down to a level of simplicity. For instance: Some curricula tell us to present to the child: A says "a" in apple. and to show them a photo of an …show more content…

Look at all of that information you are putting before that child. NO! Hold up a simple card with one simple ..a.. on it and say, "a." Do not add anything to it. Let them hear that simple sound while seeing that little shape. Do not put a bunch of information with it. Dyslexia is more often than not CAUSED in a child via teaching METHODS. Many other reading problems result from over stimulation in the teaching methods themselves, too many to cover here. The more stimulation in a learning to read program, the more information there is to distract a child from the basic sounds of the figures which represent letters. First, they must learn the basic sounds, eventually on their own, they will desire to copy those figures just as they draw you and I. Reading will come on its own as they become acquainted with the true sounds of those figures. They will automatically make the association as time unfolds. Just like they learn that the large ice cream cone standing in front of their favorite ice cream store, represents that icy cold, yummy treat, they will associate the "a" sound in many words. IF WE DO NOT DISTRACT THEM with too much to pay attention

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