Teaching your child to read is an adventure.
But it's an adventure that comes with a wonderfully clear map.
Charlotte Mason outlined three simple and logical steps to get your child reading with
confidence.
Let's start at the beginning and talk through her three levels for teaching reading.
Level 1: playing with letters and sounds This level is where your child learns the
letters and the sounds they make just by playing.
Nothing formal at this point.
If the child isn't interested in playing with a letter or sound, we don't push it.
We want this level to be very natural.
Just as the child learns about animals and their sounds incidentally—through books
and life experiences and play—that's how he should learn about letters and their sounds.
Keep it low key.
Level 2: word-building Once the child knows the letters and the sounds
they make, he starts putting those letters and sounds together to build words.
This is the point where basic phonics comes in, but again, this level is still very informal.
Even this stage of learning to read short-vowel words and long-vowel words, etc., should be
as play to the child.
Once he knows a couple of hundred words, and has this idea of word-building down, he moves
on to level 3: actual reading lessons.
You might think, "What a minute!
I thought we were doing reading lessons all along."
But when Charlotte Mason talked about reading lessons, she meant *reading* lessons: reading
sentences and paragraphs and chapters.
This level is where more formal lessons are begun, but even then the lessons are multi-sensory
and are kept very short: 10 minutes maximum.
Now, we have kits to help you walk through the process.
1: Playing with Letters and Sounds This kit gives you lots of informal games
& activities to help your child learn the letters and the sounds they make through playing.
2: Words I Can Build Details lots of games & activities to help
your child start putting those letters and sounds together to build words.
3: From Words to Books Gives you multi-sensory, short lessons just
as Charlotte Mason detailed them in her writings.
This kit will help your child move from reading individual words to reading sentences and
paragraphs and whole books.
So the next question is how do you know where your child is in this process?
Well, let's walk through the levels.
First, Does your child know the letters and the sounds they make?
Perhaps your child doesn't know any of the letters or the sounds yet.
That's fine; you will start at the beginning.
Maybe your child knows some of the letters but not all of them, start at level 1.
If he knows the uppercase letters but not the lowercase, he would be right here.
If he knows his letters but hasn't learned the sounds they make yet, level 1 would still
be the best fit.
Now, he doesn't have to know every possible sound the letters might make in every situation.
He just needs to have a good grasp of the main sounds at this level.
If your child knows the letters and the main sounds they make, look at level 2.
At this level he will be learning to read words.
Can he read short-vowel, three-letter words?
Can he read long-vowel words?
How about words with vowel combinations or blends?
If you answered no to any of those questions, you will want to start at level 2 with word-building.
Obviously, we don't expect the child to be able to read every short-vowel or long-vowel
word there is at this level, but he should be able to build and read a couple of hundred
words before he's ready for level 3.
If your child is reading short words in the environment around him, or perhaps he's trying
to read simple easy-reader-type books that use only short words, level 3 would be the
best fit for him.
Level 3 is also good for older children who are reluctant readers.
Perhaps your child just needs more confidence and some gentle, encouraging lessons to help
him gain fluency.
I've talked with lots of homeschool parents who have used Kit 3 to help a reluctant reader
and its been a good fit for that situation.
So there you have the overview of how Charlotte Mason approached teaching children to read:
start with learning letters and sounds through play; when they're ready for more, move on
to word-building, but still through informal activities and play.
And finally, when the child knows a couple of hundred words, you can move to actual reading
lessons, but keep them short and multi-sensory.
I'll talk more about each of those levels in separate videos and demonstrate what a
reading lesson would look like with Charlotte's brilliant approach to teaching reading.
Check out those videos for more.