I've been teaching Caleb how to read lately. This is impressive partially because I have absolutely no idea how to teach anyone to read, and partially because I spent a good deal of time several months ago insisting to my father-in-law that early reading is not a predictor of anything*. Oh, also it's impressive because now the child can read. Well, I mean, it's not like we can hand him War and Peace or the Bible and send him to town, but the very simplest of books? Yes. We can do those. It's amazing. Now if only Dr. Seuss weren't so incredibly asinine...
But it just happened that everywhere we went, Caleb kept asking, "What does that say?" "How do you spell super/popsicle/dog/treat/transformers/park?" And I told my mom I was thinking about teaching him to read.
Well. My mom's office is a hotbed of love for my four-year-old, and within days, one of her coworkers had dug up her kids' old early readers and handed them off. Of course with a bag of books sitting nearby specifically for him to read, Caleb couldn't just let it go. So we started with these Modern Curriculum Press books from the late '70s, and at first it was really slow going. Really slow: about half an hour for an eight-page book (with two or three lines per page).
After we got through the first set of those, though, I stumbled upon the Reading for All Learners program at our library. There are a lot more books in this program; it's published currently so getting to the next level isn't difficult, and the progress is really gradual, so it's been easy for him (and me--seeing as I don't know what I'm doing) to advance from one concept to the next. The books are a little--odd at times, but it's really exciting for him to be able to read the books all by himself.
So, rather in spite of myself, I have an emergent reader on my hands. It's been kind of exciting so far--I remember very little about learning to read, but I do remember being in charge of the "talent" for family home evening once when I was in kindergarten and forcing the family to sit through what must have been a torturous ten minutes (or more...) while I sounded out every word in my favorite book of the time (something about a mangy dog getting adopted by a girl wearing knee socks--clearly, with those impressively specific details, it made a serious impression on me).
*That's true, by the way.
I'm glad you found these books! My first year of teaching, I actually team taught in Cache Valley with Patty Willis, one of the authors of these books. Al Hofmeister frequently brought groups of teachers to my classroom to see how we set up our groups, and I would show all of my assessment stuff. He gave me Sam and Mit puppets, and Patty gave me the first 3 sets as big books. It's been fun for me to teach Abby to read, too!
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