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Bridget
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How long does it take your children to read with some fluency? What is the average age for this in your family?
Usually I start when they are 5, traditional K age, and by the time they are 7, traditional 2nd grade, they are reading with some fluency. Give or take 6 months. I really enjoy teaching reading.
I was wondering because I know so many hs'ing moms who do not like teaching a child to read. I have one friend who dislikes it so much that she sends her children to school till they can read, then homeschools them.
My DH did not read well till he was 11! But went on to graduate with honors from high school and earn several college degrees. So I know it looks different for every child.
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stefoodie
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My 15-yo started reading at age 4, my boys around age 5-6. By 7 they were all fluent readers. I *love* teaching kids to read, I love the whole process from them asking what letters make what sounds, or how to write a letter, or how to read a number or letter and then a word.... It's like giving birth all over again. They are so proud of themselves and I am of course proud of them too! To be honest, I kinda miss those days when I was so needed by my first 3 kids.
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amyable
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My kids are still young, but here is what is going on now...
My oldest (8) is just now gaining fluency, but still does struggle on a regular basis.
My 6yo has been a fluent reader for at least a year and a half!
My 3yo can sound out simple words and enjoys doing so.
I don't mind teaching reading...what is frustrating for me is teaching my oldest ANYTHING, because she has some sort of "brain drain" and nothing sticks.
But the other two were effortless and fun. 
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lapazfarm
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I hate to admit it, but I am one of those moms that doesn't really like to teach reading. I mean, I will do it, and HAVE done it for all of my children, but it is not my favorite thing.
That being said, my 4 oldest kids were pretty typical in their reading progress. Sounding out letters at 3, words at 4, reading a little at 5, and gaining fluency within the next year or so. Some were better sight readers and some were better at phonics, but it all balanced out in the end to where they were all reading very well by age 6 or 7. My girls were probably quicker than my boys.
My youngest started off at a disadvantage, not even being able to talk when she came to us at age 3. She has made enormous leaps and bounds but remains a bit behind typical. She will be 5 this summer and is just getting all her letter sounds down and a few sight words. She is very close to being able to sound out words, but isn't quite there yet. But she is quite clever and I have faith she will cruise on through when she is ready. Dh thinks she should go to public school next year so that she can be evaluated for disabilities and get some professional therapeutic help. But that is still up for debate!
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ALmom
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My oldest (girl) was fluent around 5/6 - but then didn't move on to chapter books forever and hated reading. Yet she taught herself mostly at an early age - we just played some phonics games and read some readers to see that she really did read. She loved these games and had fun - just never wanted to move beyond picture books. (Now, of course, she does read bigger books but isn't a book fan).
My next (girl) was 10 before she even really learned to read. She went from nothing to a bookaholic in about 1 year.
My next was about 8 or 9. (boy) He was a bit slower taking off but then fell in love with history and now always has a book in hand - as long as he doesn't have to write about it  .
My next(boy), I have no idea when he learned to read as I discovered it when he was reading Lord of the Rings - but at least by somewhere around 7. He does not like to read as much now - unless it is science.
My 6 yo boy is just beginning to do some letter blending - we are going slowly at his pace and keeping things very, very short.
The 3 yo just scribbles or cuts scrap paper into itsy bitsy pieces when we work with the 6 yo. (He is my first to actually cut with scissors before the age of 9 or 10 so we are thrilled!)
Now, this being said - I do know all of mine (except the 3 yo) have/had a vision problem, so we really go slowly at first unless the child is begging us for lessons. I intentionally plan to start later to allow time for a bit more eye development, finish therapy, etc. I don't mind teaching reading. Somehow I feel more confident here than anywhere else.
Another note - our latest readers are the ones that love it now and always have a book in hand.
Janet
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Meredith
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Here we started with oldest dd at age 4, she was fluent by 5, Chapter books at 5 1/2, the rest is history
Ds 7 started at around 4 1/2 to 5 and became fluent at 5 1/2 to 6, Chapter books since then.
Ds 4 is ready to start and I'm very excited for him, but am not going to push it!! He loves to listen to ALL read alouds and has been souding out words and identifying letters for about 4-5 months now. We have done NO formal letter or phonics yet, just listening!!
I have really enjoyed teaching the reading process so far!! 
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mumofsix
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I love teaching reading, and typically begin at age 4 (when our schools do). The child typically attains fluency at age 7, so nothing particular is gained by starting early, except that they enjoy it. I am so glad I still have two left to teach to read (one of them starting this next school year)!
Jane.
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Genevieve
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I am extremely grateful for this topic because I just started the journey and it's puzzling to say the least. My oldest learnt all the letters and their sounds a year ago thanks to Leapfrog. Since then, words and blending is a great puzzle to both of us, I was taught sight all the way. We have sinced jumped ship and do some words with sight. Honestly he's only 3.5 now and reading isn't his top priority.  Kim mentioned over the phone that kids go through spurts... we must be having downtime now. This thread is reassuring!
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Karen E.
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I've ended up following the kids' lead in this area.
With my oldest, I *very* informally taught letters and sounds through our reading when she was 3 or 4, because she LOVED letters and everything about them. By preschool she was reading, and was fluent very quickly.
Inexperienced mom that I was, I thought that meant teaching reading was a snap. I expected the same easy process with my second child. Nothing stuck for the longest time. She wasn't really picking up on the letters until she was 6/7, and wasn't a fluent reader until she was 8 or 9.
My youngest (almost 4) is as letter-oriented as my oldest was, and is already writing her name, looking for words, etc. I think she'll be an easy/early reader, but in the long run, it really doesn't seem to matter. My middle child is now an excellent reader ... she just had to come to it in her own time and way. I think it has a lot to do with learning styles.
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Erin
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Bridget wrote:
| I was wondering because I know so many hs'ing moms who do not like teaching a child to read. I have one friend who dislikes it so much that she sends her children to school till they can read, then homeschools them. |
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Bridget,
This is so sad. Teaching your child to read is the most exciting part of homeschooling. Nothing beats that closeness and exhilaration. No teacher is going to cuddle and praise your child like you will. Sorry if I offend anyone with too strong an opinion.
My children have varied a little. Dd12, showed an interest and motivation at 4.5, she was reading very well a year later. Ds11, was not interested didn't really click till 7 and wasn't a 'chapter book, go to bed reader' till 9. If I had my time again with him I would have treated it all differently, I hadn't yet learnt that he was different to his sister and to respect that. In the end there was no difference, just last year he read LOTR
Ds9, was similar to his brother, once again I started sounds,aroung 5 but more relaxed that time. By seven he could read independently but didn't read on his own without prodding till 9. Ds7 is not that interested he can read his reader but doesn't really want to and won't do more that 3 pages a day. Some days we don't get there, by now I am more relaxed about it all and figure it won't matter in the end. I did learn
Interestingly dd4.5 is reading how much is guesswork I'm not to sure but she is pretty accurate, normally I wouldn't have even considered reading with such a young child but it was her desire to do what 'big brother' was doing and then when day it occured to me that she really was reading. In fact I believe if I had spent more time encouraging dd12 to read she would have been the same.
Back then I was very influenced by Raymond Moore and wasn't going to teach her till later. Although I also saw alot of merit in Maria Montessori's work. In the end I took a leaf out of John Holt and decided to be child led. Just took a bit longer to get the full picture with ds11.
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teachingmom
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Karen E. wrote:
I've ended up following the kids' lead in this area.
With my oldest, I *very* informally taught letters and sounds through our reading when she was 3 or 4, because she LOVED letters and everything about them. By preschool she was reading, and was fluent very quickly.
Inexperienced mom that I was, I thought that meant teaching reading was a snap. I expected the same easy process with my second child. Nothing stuck for the longest time. She wasn't really picking up on the letters until she was 6/7, and wasn't a fluent reader until she was 8 or 9.
My youngest (almost 4) is as letter-oriented as my oldest was, and is already writing her name, looking for words, etc. I think she'll be an easy/early reader, but in the long run, it really doesn't seem to matter. My middle child is now an excellent reader ... she just had to come to it in her own time and way. I think it has a lot to do with learning styles. |
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Hey Karen, I didn't realize how closely our penpal daughters mirrored each other in their reading histories!
My 3rd dd was very similar to my first. Now it looks like my 4th will follow the path of my 2nd. I worried about the apparent reading delay with my 2nd a lot more than Karen seems to have with hers. This time, with my 4th, I can relax and wait more peacefully for things to click. It seems like it is taking a long time, but in reality, she has just now finished kindergarten, so we have time on our side.
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Karen T
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I'm glad to see this topic b/c I've been having doubts about my ability to teach my ds 6.5 to read! he had some speech difficulties (apraxia) that required speech therapy at age 2.5 for a couple years, but now speaks perfectly well. However, I've read that kids with apraxia often have dyslexia as well, so I've been worried about that.
We've been working all this year on letter sounds mostly. I started with 100 Easy Lessons; he hated that and I didn't care for it either. Then I tried the CHC's phonics - he "cheated" by using the pictures each time to guess the letter, not really learning the letters themselves! So I alternated those with some sandpaper letters I had, and now he knows most, but not all the sounds. He's picked up a few sight words b/c he's asked us to write them so he can copy them into notes, pictures, etc. But when I try to show him how to sound words out, he can say all the sounds individually, but will then randomly guess some other word not even related to the one we're trying.
I guess it will come in time. My 4.5 yo OTOH, has raced through a pre-Explode the Code book I originally bought for ds and begs for more. Ds is now doing some in a new copy of that, while dd rushes on through the next one. I didn't want to do a bunch of workbooks, but dd likes it a lot, and ds does his just to keep up with her.
I'm trying not to stress over this, but next door we have neighbors with kids about the same age, and their ds just finished public school kindergarten (which is fullday here) and she says he is reading. My oldest ds went to ps and learned to read halfway through kindergarten also, so I feel some pressure.
Ds 6.5 does love to be read to, and asks for lots of chapter books (we've read most of the Little House series, most of Narnia, some of the Cleary books, etc.) while dd prefers just picture books still.
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Willa
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I rather enjoy teaching children to read. We do it the way Karen E does, from the sound of it - each child is on their own timetable and if they can't progress in 10-15 minutes a day or come to a stuck place, we drop it for a while and go back to just reading aloud and informal teaching. I try to keep lessons simple and minimal and motivation and readiness high.
Oldest son learned to read in Catholic school. They made a very big deal of literacy there -- lots of required practice at home, parent volunteers to listen to individual readers at school. I spent so much time on this process and then DS told me he "hated reading". The first year of homeschooling we spent regaining his love for the written word.
IT didn't seem like it could be any harder to teach the other kids at home, and in fact it has been plenty easier. Less time, less logistics involved, and each one has followed their own path.
I taught my second DS, then just 7, and my only daughter, then 5.5, to read at the same time. Daughter was ready --already doing invented spelling to write her own stories -- and got it almost immediately and was trying to read everything by the time she was six. She was disappointed that she couldn't just pick up and go with books like The Hobbit and Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet! because those were the books she WANTED to read. DS became fluent around age 8.
Sean, my 4th child, I started when he was 4 because he seemed so ready. Loved listening to stories and very quick to recognize letters. However, he was 9 before he was fluent. We would pick it up off and on, and one day he simply started reading Redwall books almost overnight.
Kieron was like Sean, except I started a little later with him and he was fluent just a little earlier.
My next child has just turned 7 and has cerebral palsy and he functions as a 4 year old. HOWEVER, besides my daughter he has been by FAR the most interested in decoding the written word. The others liked to listen to stories but never showed any interest at all in deciphering words, not even their own names.
So I don't know if the difference is just temperament or that Aidan had homebound Headstart classes where the teacher spent a large part of the time talking about the alphabet, playing alphabet games and so on. He was my only child who knew the letter names before he knew their sounds, and knew the uppercase letters before the lowercase ones.
This year he has learned the lowercase letters and he has also learned the sounds for almost all the letters. We have not done any formal work at all besides some lessons in the preschool Handwriting wtihout Tears book. So he is basically self-taught. This has been SO empowering for him that I want to see if he can actually teach himself to read with little or no intervention. Blending is the last step now.
With the others I used Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons. It has worked well for a range of kids but I am getting pretty bored with it now after 4 times (each time using it more loosely and approximately) so that's another reason why I want Aidan to learn by just games and puzzles and "real books" and signs, if he can.
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Karen E.
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WJFR wrote:
So I don't know if the difference is just temperament or that Aidan had homebound Headstart classes where the teacher spent a large part of the time talking about the alphabet |
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I know what you mean -- how much is natural temperament and talent, plus learning style, and how much do we influence?
I'm not sure I know the answer to that, but I know it helped me (when I worried a bit about my second one) to remind myself of her many talents -- that she picked up on number and math concepts far more quickly than my older one ever did. Seeing that was my reminder that she might just have different talents and interests. And, above all, I wanted to keep fostering a love of books, and never turn it into drudgery, or pressure, etc.
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Karen E.
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Karen T
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I've bumped this topic back up instead of starting a new thread. My almost 7 yo ds and just turned 5 dd are working along pretty much together in learning to read. They've both finished all 3 the pre-Explode the code books (their choice - I didn't push workbooks but they were good for learning the consonant sounds) and are now at the point of decoding 3 letter words. Dd gets it and as long as I don't let her work too long, she figures most out easily, sounding each letter and then putting them together. Ds, OTOH, will sound each out individually but then can't "hear" the sounds together and will often guess something that starts with the last letter in the word. For example, if the word is sad, he'll say s-a-d then guess dog or another d word. Consequently, he gets frustrated easily. I try to just back off and not do it for awhile or focus on something else, but then he sees his younger sister doing it and wants to keep up with her. This has been a common scenario for him as he had some mild developmental delays in gross motor, and also some sensory issues (balance, dizziness, etc.) that held him back until she tried things and then he would copy her, but now that he's older he's beginning to realize that typically he "should" be doing things before her, not after.
Now, one of his strengths is a great memory for both visual and auditory things. He can tell me what everyone was wearing on a particular day a year ago, if something semi-important happened on that day. He also is more interested in writing than reading. he likes to copy words and sentences out of books, etc. (he copied the label from his underwear the other day - Fruit of the Loom
I have no desire to do flash cards, etc for sight words, but it seems like he's going to learn to read more by sight than phonics, at least for now.
How can I capitalize on his strengths and not totally ignore phonics? Or should I put aside any reading for now? How much unschooling can i get away with in reading LOL? We do read aloud a lot to him, including chapter books.
I have here at home the CHC phonics, Phonics Pathways and the Explode the Code books. I also have some games that go with Phonics Pathways but the only one they can do so far is the letter bingo; the rest involve blends and such that they haven't done yet.
Karen T
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JodieLyn
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Karen, I did use flash cards for my sight reader.. I think I posted about in a thread called sight reading. I used the flash cards because I couldn't think of any other way without going broke buying more books to keep my dd from just memorizing the books.
But we could work for tiny increments of time and never get to the frustrated with it level.
We'd turn up a card and if she knew it.. she'd get to hold the card.. if she didn't.. she'd get one try at sounding it out.. if she got it with that try without major struggling, she'd get to hold the card.. if not.. I'd say the word, she'd repeat the word (while looking at it) and then the card would go to the bottom of the stack we were working with. When she could go long enough to do all of them.. we were done when she was holding all the cards.
It was short and it was fun.. and she still practised sounding out words but not to the point of frustration (which would negate any progress we'd made).
I would make my own cards so that the words were important.. I'd use the words from a phonics reader (then periodically we could also read the book) and from recipes (she loves to cook and so we'd get words she'd need from those).
If you don't want to do the flash cards.. and he's not just memorizing the stories.. you can do the same with the phonics stuff.. let him try sounding it out, if he doesn't get it.. tell him the word and have him repeat the word while looking at it.
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TracyQ
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Our 16yos started reading at 4yo, and probably fluently by 5 at most. He is the kid who doesn't love reading, but loves writing books. Go figure.
Our 14yos started reading about 5 years old, but didn't read fluently until his vision therapy was done, because in our trying to get him to read, we discovered a vision learning problem. He could decode any word individually, but when he had a page of sentences, couldn't read fluently, with throat stops, etc. He was probably 9 or 10 before he could read very fluently, and as soon as his therapy was done, started reading all of the Lord of the Rings series, then the Redwall, etc.
Our 11yo daughter started reading at about 5 or 6 years old (latest learner), but when she finally got it, took off, and was reading chapter books quickly. She is the most voracious, often reading many big chapter books at once. She immerses herself in books, and imagination!
They are all different, but teaching each of them to read has been the biggest blessing of all of our homeschooling journey to me. I feel like I have really given them something special for their life. 
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J.Anne
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I'm still very unsure as to how the boards works, but I have a more specific question on this same topic. My daughter (6) has been reading very well for a year and a half but is hesitant to move to chapter books because she is nervous and thinks the words are too small. We're done all the early readers. She has some vision trouble, so I don't know if that is influencing things.
Jennifer
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Bridget
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Jennifer, I would think that you could start with just small parts of a book you are reading aloud to her. The first day just have her read a paragraph, the next day half a page, building up to a full page. it will build up her confidence without overwhelming her. There is no rush. It sounds like she is doing great! In no time she will be flying through chapter books.
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Christine
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My oldest started reading at age 3, fluently at age 4. Next daughter started reading at 4, fluently at age 6. I tried teaching my son how to read at age 5, but he was more interested in playing outside or listening to someone else read and never seemed to remember what he had learned, so I set reading aside until he showed signs of readiness. He did so this summer, almost a year later. He is at the beginning reading stage now and tries to read everything (not necessarily successfully). My 4-year-old is biting at the bit to read. So, I recently started to teach her and she is coming along quite well (much to the chagrin of her brother). Like you, I believe that every child is different and ready to read at varying times.
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4Real Forums : Language Arts Come Alive
Topic: Reading age?
