CHAPTER FOUR
Unlocking the Doors
The Preschool Years
Very soon after I went to live with Mr. and Mrs. Auld, she very kindly commenced to teach me the A, B, C. After I had learned this, she assisted me in learning to spell words of three or four letters....I had no regular teacher [but]....The first step had been taken. Mistress, in teaching me the alphabet, had given me the inch, and no precaution could prevent me from taking the ell. The plan which I adopted, and the one by which I was most successful, was that of making friends of all the little white boys whom I met in the street. As many of these as I could, I converted into teachers. With their kindly aid, obtained at different times and in different places, I finally succeeded in learning to read.
- Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave: Written by Himself (1845)
SUBJECT: Preparation for Reading, Writing and Math, Birth-Age 5
TIME REQUIRED: Start with 10 minutes day, gradually increasing to an hour by age 5.When you educate your child at home, you don't have to draw a line between parenting and teaching. Teaching -- preparing the child for the twelve formal years of classical education -- begins at birth.
PRESCHOOL: BIRTH TO THREE The best early teaching you can give your child is to immerse her in language from birth.Reading Turn off the television; half an hour of Mr. Rogers per day is plenty for any child under five. Talk, talk, talk -- adult talk, not baby talk. Talk to children while you're walking in the park, while you're riding in the car, while you're fixing dinner. Tell them what you're doing, while you're doing it ("Now I'm going to send a fax. I put the paper in face-down and punch in the telephone number of the fax machine I'm calling...and then the paper starts to feed through like this." "I spilled flour on the floor. I'm going to get out the vacuum cleaner and plug it in. I think I'll use this brush-- it's the furniture brush, but the flour's down in the cracks, so it should work better than the floor brush"). This sort of constant chattering lays a verbal foundation in your child's mind. She's learning that words are used to plan, to think, to explain; she's figuring out how the English language organizes words into phrases, clauses, and complete sentences. We have found that children from silent families ("We never really talk much during the day" one mother told us) struggle to read.
Read, read, read. Start reading chunky books to your baby in his crib. Give her sturdy books that he can look at alone. (A torn book or two is a small price to pay for literacy). Read picture books, pointing at the words with your finger. Read the same books over and over; repetition builds literacy (even as it slowly drives you insane). Read longer books without pictures while they sit on your lap or wallow on the floor or cut and paste and color. Read books onto tapes, along with their comments, so that they can listen to you read over and over again. Get an infant-proof tape recorder so that babies can listen to you reading, singing, talking, and telling stories and poems while they play in their cribs.
After you read to your toddler, ask her questions about the story. Why did the little gingerbread man run away from the little old woman? Why did all the dogs want to go to the top of the tree in Go, Dog, Go? Why did Bananas Gorilla take all the bananas?
As soon as children begin to talk (which will be early if they're immersed in language like this), teach them the alphabet. Sing the alphabet song whenever you change a diaper (often). Stencil alphabet letters, both capital letters and lowercase letters, to the wall, or put up a chart. Read alphabet rhymes and alphabet books.
When they know the names of the letters, tell them that every letter has a sound, just like animals -- pigs say oink, dogs say woof, and b says b, b, b as in baby. Start with the sounds of the consonants in the alphabet (that's everything except a, e, i, o, and u). Tell them that b is the sound at the beginning of bat, ball, and Ben; say "T, t, tickle," and "m, m, mommy" and "c, c, cat."
Then tell them that the vowels (a, e, i, o, u) are named A, E, I, O, and U. Sing "Old McDonald had a farm, AEIOU." Then, teach them that each vowel says a sound, just like an animal -- a as in at, e as in egg, i as in igloo, o as in octopus, and u as in umbrella. These are the short sounds of the vowels, and the only vowel sounds you should teach at first. All of this is prereading.
Prereading preparations works. Susan was reading on a fifth grade level in kindergarten. Her son Christopher was checking out fourth and fifth-grade books halfway through his first year of school at home. We've seen these results duplicated by other home-schoolers. If you create a language-rich home, limit TV and videos, and then teach systematic phonics, you will produce readers.Writing Very young children (under two) will pick up a pencil and imitate scribbling. Teach a child FROM THE BEGINNING to hold the pencil correctly. Draw lots of circles and loops in a counterclockwise direction. Most printed letters use counterclockwise circles; although many children naturally want to draw circles clockwise, this habit will make cursive handwriting very difficult later on. Make snowmen, Slinkies, smoke from a train, car wheels, etc. all in a counterclockwise direction.
Let the child practice making letters without using a pencil. A young child lacks fine-motor maturity, but she can form letters and numbers by writing in rice or sand with her finger, or with chalk on a big chalkboard, or with a crayon or big pencil on large sheets of paper. Teach three-year-olds basic dot-to-dot skills -- draw your own dot-to-dot picture (a house, a smiley face) using four or five big dots, and guide the child's crayon from dot to dot so that she can see the picture emerge. Continual drawing and making counterclockwise circles will prepare the preschooler for kindergarten writing.
Start to make your child "mathematically literate" in the toddler years. Just as you read to the toddler, surrounding her with language until he understood that printed words on a page carried meaning, you need to continually expose the child to mathematical processes and language. Only then will she understand that mathematical symbols carry meaning. Math
Bring numbers into everyday life as often as possible. Start with counting -- count fingers, toes, eyes and ears, toys and treasures, rocks and sticks. Play hide and seek, counting to five and then ten, fifteen or twenty together. Count by twos, fives and tens before shouting "Coming, ready or not!" Play spaceship in cardboard boxes and count backwards for takeoff. Read number books together. Once the child is comfortable counting, you can start working on simple math sums -- usually during the K-4 and K-5 years.General preschool learning. In addition to prereading and beginning math skills, you can prepare your child for kindergarten work by using June R. Oberlander's Slow and Steady, Get Me Ready. It's a birth-to-age-four activity book that provides a new, developmentally appropriate activity for each week of life. Week 1 begins with exercising the newborn's arms and legs; Age 4, Week 52 learns to pack an overnight bag. In between, Oberlander (a kindergarten teacher) covers everything from playing peek-a-boo and learning "in" and "out" through tying shoes, learning telephone numbers, bouncing balls, and singing the alphabet while making a different body movement for each letter. It's a complete preschool in one volume. Combine prereading instruction with the Oberlander book and lots of active play, and you'll have the at-home equivalent of an excellent preschool program.KINDERGARTEN YEARS: FOUR AND FIVE We have mixed feelings about formal kindergarten programs for four and five-year-olds. A kindergarten program that mixes beginning reading and writing with lots of artwork and active play can be productive. But it's a rare five-year-old who's ready to do very much paper-and-pencil work in a desk; and a six-year-old who hasn't done a formal kindergarten program can easily begin first grade work.
"I can always tell the children who've been to kindergarten from the ones who haven't," a first-grade teacher told Susan.
"Are they that much farther ahead?" Susan asked.
"No," she said, "but they already know how to stand in line."
Kindergarten does teach five-year-olds to stand in line, to wait to go to the bathroom, to raise their hands when they want to ask a question, and to walk through a cafeteria without spilling their food. But if you're teaching your child at home, these aren't necessarily survival skills she has to have right away.
Four-year-old kindergarten accomplishes even less. Most four-year-olds have microscopic attention spans, immature hand-eye coordination, and a permanent case of the wiggles. And normal four-year-olds differ widely in their maturity levels -- one might be ready to read and completely disinterested in writing, another might enjoy drawing and handwork but show no desire to read, while a third might enjoy endless games of Uno but reject anything having to do with letters and words.
We feel that there's very little point in following a formal, academic K-4 or K-5 curriculum at home. Rather, the four and five-year-old years should be spent in informal teaching -- preparing the child for first-grade work. In about thirty minutes per day, plus informal teaching as you go about your family life, you can easily teach your child beginning reading, writing, and math concepts, all without workbooks or teacher's manuals.
If you're already teaching an older child at home, your four-year-old may beg to "do school" as well. At the end of the chapter, we'll recommend several reading and math programs that will keep a kindergartner occupied at one end of the table while her big brother does second-grade math at the other end. But try not to think of these curricula as schoolwork; otherwise you may find yourself pushing a reluctant preschooler to "just finish that page," when her attention span has long since expired.
Rather, you should aim to teach reading and math in the same way that you taught the child to speak, to tie her shoes, to dress, to clean up after himself -- by demonstrating the basic skills yourself, practicing them for a few minutes each day, and talking about them as you go through the routines of life. ("There are four of us. How many spoons should you put on the table so that we can each have one?" "Can you get me the can that says Tomato on it? You'll recognize the T that says t, t, tomato.")
You can use charts, tapes, games, workbooks, and stickers if you want to. But you don't need them.Reading A classical education relies heavily on the written word. As a parent-educator, your number-one goal should be to have your child reading fluently when he starts first-grade work.
Here's the good news: Reading is easy.
We'll repeat that: Reading is easy.
One more time: Reading is easy.
Unfortunately, the First Commandment of American Education seems to be Thou shalt be an expert before attempting to teach reading. It isn't true. Forget everything you've ever heard about decoding, phonemic awareness, and comprehension skills. If a five-year-old can master beginning reading, you can certainly master it as well.
Reading is easy. Frederick Douglass, not to mention Abraham Lincoln, Benjamin Franklin, and thousands of eighteenth-century pioneer children, learned to read with the alphabet and a few good books. Douglass learned his ABC's from an adult and the rest of his Reading Competency Skills from street-urchins. Jessie learned to read from a set of alphabet blocks. Between the ages of four and six, any child who has been read to since toddlerhood and is not suffering from an actual organic disorder of some kind can learn to read. And any reasonably literate adult (which includes anyone who can read this book) can serve as tutor for basic phonics skills.
You should continue to immerse four and five-year-olds in language, just as you've been doing since birth. Read with them in the "real world." Read billboards, store names, bumper stickers, cereal boxes in the grocery store, banners at the gas station.
Get them books-on-tape -- not the fifteen-minute children's tapes with all the bells and whistles designed to keep children occupied, but real books read in their entirety without sound effects. Most public libraries have shelves of books on tapes in the children's sections. Children can listen to and enjoy books that are far, far above their vocabulary level; in one year, Susan's three-year-old and five-year-old listened to all of Kipling's Just So stories, the original Jungle Book, all of Edith Nesbit's books, the Chronicles of Narnia, Barrie's densely written Peter Pan, E. B. White's Charlotte's Web and The Trumpet of the Swan, Frances Hodgson Burnett's The Little Princess, the unabridged Dickens A Christmas Carol. Books on tape stock a child's mind with the sounds of thousands of words. When he starts sounding words out later on, she'll progress much more quickly if she recognizes the words.
Read yourself. Turn off the TV, don't rent a movie; read a book, do a crossword puzzle, or buy the New York Times.
Keep on reading together. Start to ask slightly more complex questions about the stories. "What was Wilbur afraid of, in Charlotte's Web? Why was Fern's mother worried when Fern told her that the animals were talking to her?"
By the age of four, the average child should know her alphabet and the sounds that each letter makes. Continue to work on letter names and sounds; Jessie suggests lower-case magnetic refrigerator letters as one good way to continually work on letter skills. You can give the child a d magnet and say "d, d, d, dog"; you can say, "Mary, go get me the letter that says "t, t, t," and Mary will go over to the refrigerator and decide which letter makes that sound.
Sometime around age four or five, most children are ready to start reading. Sit down with a simple primer that teaches phonics -- the sounds that letters make when they're combined together into words. The best primer we could find is called Phonics Pathways (see ordering information in the Resources section at the end of this chapter.). Each lesson teaches a different sound combination and follows this with practice words that use the combination just taught. The first five lessons teach the vowel sounds a, e, i, o, and u; since the child probably already knows these sounds, she'll feel like he's starting to read already. The sixth lesson (page 9) begins blends -- putting the short vowel sounds together with consonants such as s (sa, se, si, so, su). We've found that young children enjoy reading these nonsense syllables!
By the eleventh lesson, the child is reading easy three-letter words such as Dan and bun. Continue systematically through the primer. Go slowly, with plenty of repetition; reread the lessons until your child is completely comfortably with the sounds and their combination into words. Do this for five minutes to start with; work up to ten or fifteen minutes per session.
At some other time during the day, sit down with the child and a real book and let her read it. At the end of this chapter, you'll find a list of books that can be read with relative ease, even by a child who's only learned consonants and one or two vowel sounds. (The first few Bob Books and Modern Curriculum Press's early readers only use the a vowel sound, so you can start on a real book right after the first few lessons!) Don't forget: You've already done your drill. Give the child a good chance to sound words out, but if she gets stuck, sound it out for him and move on. If you get to a word that uses a rule he hasn't used yet, simply tell him what the rule is and keep going.
Child: "Ann went to the steps and went -- " (sticks on the word "down")
You: "That says 'down.' O and w together say 'ow.' D-ow-n."
Child: " -- down."
If you don't know the rule yourself, tell the child the word and move on. (And look it up later.)
Certain words need to be taught as "sight words" because, even though they are unphonetic or follow advanced phonetic rules, they appear with great regularity in the easiest of books. Put the, she, he, a, I, of, to, was, and you on flashcards and drill them; most children pick these up very quickly. You may find that a few other unphonetic words (would, there) pop up often enough to add to your list.
Start with five minutes of drill and five minutes of reading in an easy book, every day. Work up to fifteen minutes of each. Don't ask, "Do you want to do your reading now?" (They always say no.) Plan it as matter-of-factly as you would plan teeth-brushing and bed-making. You'll be astounded at the speed with which children begin to sound out words on their own.
The advantage to this method is that you're not limited in what you read with the child; if the parent sounds out words which are beyond the child's "drill level," the two of you can read practically anything in the "easy reading" or "beginning reader" section of the library together. And you'll often find that your child has already absorbed a rule by the time you get to it in the primer. If you say enough times, while reading, "The e on the end makes the a say its name -- that's the difference between hat and hate," your little reader will greet that rule when you arrive at it with a shrug: "I already knew that."
And that's it. Remember: Reading is easy.
Reading is easy.
Reading is easy.
Don't you need flashcards, songs, drills, exercises, workbooks, and charts?
We don't think so, for several reasons.
In the first place, lots of people who are teaching a four or five-year-old to read have a toddler, or a newborn. (Susan had both, when her oldest son was five.) Sorting through charts and songs and trying to follow a program with lots of aids is simply more complicated than it needs to be. With this method, all you need is a primer and lots of books.
Second, all those reinforcement and aids create extra mental steps for the learner. If you're teaching a child to sing a song about, "A is for apple, b is for bear..." you're teaching the child to see an a, think "apple," and then think the sound of short a. If you have a flashcard that says "b" with a picture of a bird on it, the picture -- not the letter -- becomes a signal to the child to say the "b" sound. The child goes through an extra step in associating the sound with the letter. Instead of looking at a b and forming the "b" sound, the mental process becomes, "B...bird...b." This is slow, and in many cases the child stays slow because she becomes dependent on the clue. Without the clue, the child has no idea how to "break" the code of the word. There's an easier way. Just point to the a and say "a, a, a" (that's the short a sound as in at); point to the b and say "b, b, b." Even two and three-year-olds love this game, and they learn these associations much faster than you might expect.
Third, most reinforcements -- even though they may be advertised and produced for a home education setting -- were originally designed for a classroom of children. A teacher teaching a whole group of students to read can't sit down with each one, and teach each child to say the correct sound of each letter whenever he sees it on the page. That's an intensive, one on one process. She has to resort to the second-best method -- reinforcing the correct sound through secondary aids in a non-reading context. You don't have to do that.
Fourth, you're not teaching your four or five-year-old the exhaustive elements of the English language. Beginning in first grade, your child will receive a more thorough grounding in the rules of spelling -- which are simply phonics rules applied to writing. (We'll recommend resources for doing this in Chapter Seven.) During the K-4 and K-5 years, your goal is simply to get the child reading as quickly and fluently as possible. A kindergartener doesn't need to be able to list from memory all the different ways a long-e sound can be spelled; she just needs to be able to pronounce meal, field and teeth when he sees them.
If you prefer a workbook approach and have a coordinated preschooler who doesn't have trouble with writing skills, or if you have a younger child who's anxious to do workbooks in imitation of an older sibling, you might consider investing in Modern Curriculum Press's Phonics Program. This has lots of fun stuff for young learners -- playing Alphabet Hopscotch, making "consonant cans," finding hidden pictures, and so on. None of this is necessary, but you might have fun with it. A few cautions: This phonics program ties reading and writing together, which we think can be frustrating for the very young child and can retard reading skills (see p. 59). Ignore the writing sections if you don't think your child is ready to do them. It's probably best used as an activity supplement to Phonics Pathways. The Modern Curriculum Press kindergarten-level book (Level K) seems more appropriate for home-taught threes and early fours; Level A, the first-grade book, can be done at home in kindergarten. You don't need to buy the expensive teacher's manuals, which are heavy on classroom supplements and suggestions for teaching these skills to children for whom English is a second language.
What if my child isn't ready to read?
If you've read to your preschooler since she could stare at a page, you can start this process at age four and take a couple of years to go through it. Or you can start at age five and do it in less time. Second and third children, who've watched older brothers and sisters learn to read, are likely to want to start sooner. If your four-year-old asks you for a reading lesson, oblige her. I (Jessie) taught Susan to read at three, because every time I sat down with her five-year-old brother to do a phonics lesson, she wanted to be included.
Reading readiness (like everything else in this chapter) isn't complicated. A child is ready to learn to read when she collects her stuffed animals and a picture book and tells them a story; or when she picks up a book and sits on the sofa and pretends she's reading to you; or when she constantly asks you "What does this say?" All of these activities show that she understands the whole concept of print words carrying a message.
Most five-year olds are perfectly capable of learning to read, which doesn't mean that they'll want to do it. A child who squirms, complains, and protests every time you produce the primer isn't demonstrating "reading unreadiness." She's simply being five. It's a rare child who wants to do something unfamiliar which involves work, and we haven't yet met a five-year-old who could be convinced to set her eyes on long range goals. If the child doesn't want to learn to read, tell her that you're going to do five minutes per day anyway. Five minutes per day of a difficult task will not warp any child's mental state.
The beginning stage -- when you're teaching the child to sound out three-letter-words for the very first time -- is the most difficult. Persist until you can start the child on the "Bob Books" or the first Modern Curriculum Press readers (see the list of resources at the end of this chapter). Most children will swell up with pride over being able to read a Whole Book All Alone. Once they've started putting sentences together, they'll tell you they don't need to do the drill anymore; they just want to read. That's a good sign, but insist on the ten minutes of drill every day until you've covered all the pages in Phonics Pathways.
But use common sense. If you've started on three-letter words, done a faithful ten minutes per day for three or four weeks and the child shows absolutely no comprehension, he hasn't made the connection between print and sounds yet. Drop it for a month or two and then come back to it.Many of the phonics programs we examined insist that you combine writing with reading. In other words, teach the child the consonants and the sound of a, but don't go on to the next step until the child is able to both read AND write sat, cat, fat, bat from dictation. Writing
We think this tends to frustrate very young readers. Remember, you want the child to read quickly, easily, and early. Many children are ready to read long before they have the muscular coordination to write. Why delay reading until the muscles of the hand and eye catch up?
So do your reading and writing drills separately during the four and five-year-old years. Whenever the child is able to comfortably hold the pencil and has some control over it, move on to formal writing instruction. Get your little one a beginning writing tablet that has large-ruled lines and patterns for forming each letter (see end of chapter for ordering information). Teach one letter (always do capital and small letters together) or number at a time until you've gone through the entire alphabet and the numbers 1-100. You can either follow the letter sequence in the handwriting tablets we suggest, or teach the letters in the order presented in Phonics Pathways. The writing tablets have arrows and numbers to show the exact way that letters should be written -- the circle for a small a, for example, is always drawn counter-clockwise; the straight edge of a capital D is always drawn first, with the curve of the letter drawn second. This is important! Make sure you teach the child to write the letter properly, and for the first few months, supervise her carefully so that she doesn't fall into bad habits.
The best resource for teaching writing is the Zaner-Bloser company, which publishes colorful learn-to-write workbooks using the "continuous-stroke alphabet." In traditional ball-and-stick writing, the student continually lifts his hand -- if she writes a small d, for example, he draws a circle, picks up his pencil, and then connects a line to the circle. In continuous-stroke alphabet, the letter is written in one motion. This simplifies writing and makes for an easier transition into cursive. Start with the kindergarten level book, and let the child progress forward at his own rate. The books don't give a lot of practice space, so you'll want to order some extra paper (information at the end of the chapter).
When you've worked through the entire alphabet, let the child begin to copy words that you write out for her: family names are a good place to start. Eventually, ask her to copy very short sentences. I love you. Ben is smart! Do you like to write? In this way, the five-year-old not only practices writing, but begins to learn the conventions of written language -- capitals for names and the beginnings of sentences, spaces between words, periods and exclamation points. In first and second grade, you'll progress to dictation, where the child writes without a model in front of her. But for now, write out the sentences for her to copy and let her refer to your models as often as needed. Ten minutes per day, three to five times per week, is sufficient. Frequency and consistency bring quicker results than prolonged sessions.
A word about cursive writing: A great debate is on about when to introduce cursive penmanship. Some educators say that children should begin with cursive and skip manuscript printing; others recommend beginning cursive anywhere between first and fourth grade. We have always chosen to teach printing until the child is writing quickly and well, and then begin cursive penmanship -- usually in the middle of second grade. This seems easier for most children.Now that the child can count, continue to do "daily" math by adding and subtracting in the context of everyday family life. Setting the table is a great math exercise -- ask your child to figure out how many plates, knives, forks and spoons are necessary. Add and subtract in the grocery store ("Look, Mike, I'm picking up four tomatoes and then one more tomato -- that makes five!)." Cook together -- recipes are full of fractions and measures. When you cut a sandwich in halves or quarters, say "Look! I cut this in half!" or "I cut this into fourths!" Math
Play games that use numbers. Uno is a classic -- it teaches both number and color matching. Simple card games such as Battle and Go Fish require children to remember which numbers are higher and which are lower.
Do lots of addition and subtraction with manipulatives (beans, buttons, pencils, chocolate chips), and practice counting to 100, counting by twos, fives, and tens, understanding money, telling time, and naming geometric figures -- circles, squares, triangles, rectangles. Learn to write the numbers (but don't expect the written numbers to mean very much to the child at this point).
Your public library should have a colorful selection of kindergarten-level math books -- easy problems worked out with photographed objects. Get a book every week and read through it with your child.
If you do this, your child will be perfectly ready for first-grade math. Susan's oldest had no difficulty with the first-grade Saxon math program (see Chapter 6), even though we had never done a formal kindergarten math program. As in reading, though, younger children may enjoy having a math program to work on along with an older brother or sister; the Saxon kindergarten math program is fun and full of manipulatives. Again, think of a kindergarten math program as a game, not as an academic pursuit. If the child gets tired after five or ten minutes, don't force her to finish the lesson.If you'd like to do kindergarten science projects with your preschooler, a marvelous resource is Bubbles, Rainbows & Worms: Science Experiments for Pre-School Children. Although this book is designed for preschool and kindergarten teachers, it's easily used at home; the directions are clear, and the experiments use common household items. Each experiment has a little script for you to follow in talking about the experiment (the Gravity experiment, where the child stands on top of a chair and drops all sorts of objects, says "Use the word gravity as you talk about things falling. Explain that gravity is a force that can't be seen but can be felt.") You can supplement beginning reading, writing, and math by doing a science experiment once a week. The Bubbles, Rainbows & Worms experiments cover air, water, animals, plants, the human body, the environment, and even a few elementary chemistry projects -- growing crystals, working with magnets. General kindergarten learning
Back to Chapters Index
Back to Well-Trained Mind page