Teaching children to read should be fun, BUT, unfortunately, this is not the experience of most parents.  I can still remember, with horror, the tension that surrounded my efforts to get my boys to practise their reading…there was no enjoyment!!!!  It was painful to say the least.  Thank God they had great teachers!!!!  I hope in the next few blogs that I help you to make your child’s reading experience enjoyable.

This week, I am concentrating on the experiences that make learning to read easier and fun.  Experiences provide knowledge about how the world works, they also improve vocabulary.  These experiences need to be many and varied.  They could be visits to museums, beaches, rainforests, deserts, talking about different countries and visiting countries, visiting the vet, anything that can add to the child’s knowledge base and vocabulary development.

If you were to break down in your car in a remote area and had no mechanical knowledge you would find it extremely difficult to understand the car manual to get you moving again…BUT, if you had some knowledge of the workings of a car and the names of the parts of the motor you would have a better chance of being able to work out how to fix the vehicle from reading the manual.  The more knowledge of cars the better equipped you would be to read the manual and understand it.  The above example shows how life’s experiences support reading development.

When learning through experience the child uses listening and speaking skills that develop as learning progresses.

The Letterbox  blogs on reading will be compartmentalised so, as we go along, we can concentrate on one component of reading at a time.  But, this isn’t how reading really works.  The components of reading are all integrated. This integration will be more noticeable as we move more into the formal components of reading.

Enjoy your experiences this week and I look forward to our interactions on the blogg. Comment below about your child’s experiences.