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Nov. 13, 2005
Early reading
A homeschool mailing list that I belong to
has had a recent flurry of comments about young readers. I posted
a comment this morning, but didn't go into a lot of detail because I
didn't want to come across as bragging. I was an early
reader. I was my parents 5th child and the closest in age to me
when I was born was 5. My mom says she wanted to give me
something to do when I couldn't play with them, so she started teaching
me to read. At 9 months old. I couldn't even say all the
words, so she would just have me point. She used flash cards
exclusively...no phonics at all.
I have no memory of any of this. I have no memory of learning to
read at all. The only memory I have of using flash cards is
trying to teach one of my friends to read with them at about age
4. What I remember is teaching myself to fingerspell from the
back cover of the Annie Sullivan biography I read at about age 4.
And teaching myself to play the clarinet at around the same time by
sneaking my brother's clarinet and band book down to the basement
steps. (It was too heavy for me to hold so I sat on the steps so
I could prop it up on the steps below me.) I remember my parents
giving me my first Bible at age 5. I immediately curled up in my
favorite chair and started reading it. I remember when we did
family Bible study, I loved reading the crazy names.
Parents wonder when to start teaching their kids and worry if they
aren't reading by a certain age. I have to say that reading early
was a tremendous advantage for me. But I not only learned to
read, I learned to love reading. I read voraciously and I don't
think you can do that without learning at least a little. In my
case, I made the connection early that books contain the information
you need to learn something you want to learn. I followed up
clarinet with teaching myself flute and French at age 6. I've
been teaching myself things from books all my life. My younger
brother was not an early reader. I tried to teach him at 9 months
too, but he couldn't be bothered. However, he's now (at age 24)
the Director of Web Operations for the world's largest managed hosting
company. He taught himself to program out of books, so his
reading skills are just fine. I don't think that when
you learn to read is nearly as important as having intellectual
curiosity and learning that books are a place you can go to get the
answers to your questions.
I think the miraculous thing that my mom did was not to teach me to
read at such a young age. I think it was to teach me to make the
connection between reading and knowledge at such a young age. I
still have an insatiable desire to know, so maybe that's an inherent
trait of mine. But how did she get me to research my own
interests at 3 and 4 years old? I think that's the most valuable
lesson I've ever learned (academically speaking), and what a blessing
it was to learn it so early.
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