Learning to read on the go

One area I’ve always had room to improve upon is sitting down and doing reading and writing practice. It’s probably the thing that gives me the most guilt around home education.

On the reading side it’s turned out fine for two of our kids who have learned on their own around age 7 & 8. They’ve since become great readers.

The thing that I find hard is the routine of dedicating time to practice. Yes we do embed a lot of this into our day to day lives, but intentional practice is much needed too.

As with all things that require consistency and a routine, we start well, but then for a whole bunch of reasons fall out of practice. Mostly life gets busy and really at home there are so many distractions.

In the past I’ve used Flash cards that we have kept in the car as a way to build in practice. Then when it was a good moment, I’d encouraged my son to pull them out and practice.

This actually worked really well. There is often a lot of driving involved in home education. Filling this time up with something productive is right up my street.

I haven’t done this with all my kids, but I’m starting it up with my youngest. She’s almost six and I feel she’s ready. I’m starting with easier ones to begin with. Some are letters. Some have pictures to support her and allow her to “guess”…