Learning to Read With Life Long Learning

Life Long Learning

What About Learning to Read?

Just recently, another homelearning mom emailed me asking about what to do about learning to read within Life Long Learning? Thus, in thinking about it, I thought it would be a good idea to place a page up here about a question that this mom and so many other homelearning parents that have asked me about this same question. Below here is my response to her I wish to thank this mom as it is from her bringing forth this question to the forefront again that was the inspiration for me creating this webpage. It is through her question and the subsequent answer I write here within this page, that will bring learning to all whom read this page. So Thank you to you dear friend for this gift.

What About Learning to read within Life Long Learning?

First I invite you to read the Life Long Learning book as it will gift you with alot of insight on this topic. In addition to what is already within the page of the book: As a former public and private school teacher now a homelearning mom who in the system worked as a reading teacher the last time I was teaching, I can tell you that allowing your child to take the lead on their reading is really the best blessing of unconditional love we can ever gift to our children. As a reading teacher, I was told that I must push the children to read at such and such a level by such and such a grade or time frame. All this did was manifest children whom simply read because they were told to not because they love to read and some children who even hated reading. I can remember that with my own children that when they were your child's age that they had a child like innocence of loving reading and of learning to read. When a child enters the compulsory education system or even with a school-at-home approach (and I know this as I did this with my own children in the whole school-at-home pushing reading and writing and such for several years before coming to the place we are now) this love of learning to read is then quashed by have to's and musts rather than learning naturally. This forcing of children to read eventually gets them to hate reading and this is why we see so many adults who have been in the schooling environment only read when they have to such as for their jobs. Very few adults read for the sheer pleasure of reading, unless they learned how to step outside of the schooling environment box while in the system. Some like myself, did, others like my husband and my father, hate to read and only read what interests them and very little of that. Reading what interests us, and our children is a wonderful way to learn to read and to love to learn to read, which is why my husband and father in their approach to reading only what they are interested in is ok. It is because they were forced to read as children though that even reading what they are interested in to them becomes a chore and they still do not like it. For an example, my husband would rather listen to a book on CD on something that interests him rather than even consider sitting down with that same material in book format and actually reading it. And this is because he was forced to read as a child that he never had the opportunity to develop his love of reading of his own volition.

Learning naturally does not mean that we do no reading with our child or that they will be free from ever learning how to read, sentence structure and the like. What it does mean is that we allow our child to take the lead, just as the did when they were smaller with picking up a book and reading it. It is seeing too, just like a child first learns the word "Mc Donald's" from that big yellow M in the sky as we drive by, that children learn reading not just from a book but from everywhere and anywhere in life. It really is within learning ourselves that gifting our child with the experience of choosing of their own volition what, when, and how they choose to read that really opens the door for the to WANT to read and to WANT to learn what we call as the "correct way" to spell words and to write them and sentence structure and what is a noun and all of those learnings. And the more they read of their own volition, the more that they will learn about how to read and write and spell. the more that you spend time reading to them and with them so that they see the book, the words, not you just spewing the words out but seeing the written word with you as it is being read or having a second copy of the book if possible so that they can follow what is being spoken with what is being written, the more the will want to learn how it is that we spell, how it is that we write and why words are the way they are.

I myself am testimonial proof of this. Yes, growing up in school I learned about what prepositions were and such. In fact, I got very good at being a robot who memorized the phrase is, are, was, were, am, been, being...and the rest of them I do not remember! Did they help me with reading? Did it help me with writing or spelling? No, because all it was to me was a list of words that I had to memorize for some test. How I did learn to read, write, and spell came from my own love of learning to read. From as far back as I can remember, I would read everything I could get my hands on. Most of my days in school at what we called back then as recess and lunch were spent in the library, reading books. I would beg my mom all the time after school or on weekends to drive me to the library which was only a few blocks from the school I went to as a young child. It was in seeing repeatedly the written word, and taking the time to pronounce it "incorrectly" and then listening to my mom and others in school who were reading to me as I followed along in the same book pointing to each word as it was read to make the association that that sound coming from mom's or other's lips corresponds to this word and this is how it is spelled is what helped me to learn how to read, write, and spell. Other than various members of school teachers reading allowed to me so I could make the correlation, something of which we already provide with our children at home when we read to them as small children, I learned how to read through this manner. Learning through this way provided meaning to the written words, rather than them being jus a bunch of words, I was enjoying the delight of those words as they were within something that I was interested in within merely picking up a book and reading it or being read to. It brought forth my innate curiosity of learning of wanting to learn that all children have and all children do. We are born with an innate sense to learn, it is what we come here to this earth to do. That innate sense of wanting to learn and discover the world around us only gets quashed when we enter the schooling environment and we are told that we have to learn and that the schools way is the only way to learn.

And what about writing and spelling correctly within reading? What if my child never learns how to spell correctly or write correctly or read correctly? I have these questions come to me from parents all the time. My response is that in the gifting of our children choosing of their own volition, we can then realize that learning to write and spelling can come naturally as well because if they are reading of their own volition, then they are able to see that the word 'The' as an example is spelled T H E, right there for them within what they are reading. Then when they come and ask "Hey mommy, how do you spell 'The'?" we can give them the guidance of saying hey lets go look that up in the book you read with that word in it that you were reading the other day, or an hour ago. It is within sharing with the emulation of modeling reading within reading on our own, and reading with our child continuously so that they can see the word being spoken matches the word that is written is what gives life to reading, writing, and spelling and to our child wanting to learn these things.

This then also opens the door to offer as a suggestion to play the fun ways of learning things like nouns, verbs, and such and their uses within hands on game like mad libs. Games such as Boggle, or Scrabble, or online Text Twist also help with spelling. If Scrabble is too advanced, then adapt it by just using the letters and allowing your child to create whatever words they can come up with that maybe they have seen in a book they have read or saw on a sign as you were driving to the store. Also we just found a website that I have listed on the free stuff page of my website called writing backwards. It takes whatever you wish to write and writes it backwards for you. We had a blast for over an hour learning how to spell things backwards and in essence in doing this, the our boys learned the way to spell it "right" as well!:) Or like a few weeks back now, we learned to read a whole book backwards! Does you remember the book Mouse Soup By Arnold Lobel? It was one of my favorite books as a child that I read and my mom would read to me:) Well, Matthew asked me if I would read it to him the other night and I said sure. Anthony came in during the book and listened to us read as well. So we read it, and afterwards, Matthew asked can we read it backwards? and I said Sure why not? Well what he meant was to read it like as we learned in our learnings of world religions that the Hebrew Bible or Torah is read which is say page 100, then 99, 98, 97, and so on. Well, instead of reading it one page at a time, we ended up reading it backwards one WORD at a time. Thus the sentence the old lady became lady old the, which had Matthew and Anthony and me for that matter busting up laughing. We read all 64 pages of Soup Mouse, of I mean Mouse Soup one sentence at a time backwards! We had a blast! And almost to the beginning or I mean end of the story, Matthew said "Gee Mommy, I never knew reading could be this much fun!" And he is right, what fun it was!! So many times we think that things should be written and said and read in a certain way, but who says? Just because someone years ago said so, does not mean we are not free to learn and explore it in a new way! And in doing so, our boys made a connection to reading, to love of reading, to learning and love of learning that connection that will last a lifetime:)

Having fun and playing with words and books, just as you do when your child is small is a wonderful way of learning. Children and (even adults) do learn through play:) as it takes the 'have to's' out of the equation and makes learning fun! And it you ever doubt whether or not a child is reading, writing, and spelling correctly, then take a look at this ~

I cdnuolt blveiee taht I cluod aulaclty uesdnatnrd waht I was rdanieg. The phaonmneal pweor of the hmuan mnid, aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it dseno't mtaetr in waht oerdr the ltteres in a wrod are, the olny iproamtnt tihng is taht the frsit and lsat ltteer be in the rghit pclae. The rset can be a taotl mses and you can sitll raed it whotuit a pboerlm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe. Azanmig huh? yaeh and I awlyas tghuhot slpeling was ipmorantt!

So, yes there are many books that show you how to "teach" your child to read, to write, and to spell. There is many curriculums out there for this. However, I say, that you already have everything you need right there with you already and you have been using it since the day that your child was born, when you began reading to them. There is so much reading available right in our own home or while driving to the grocery store or on a trip to see grandma and grandpa. There is reading on the cereal boxes in the pantry, or of a favorite plaque in your house, or a music CD collection, or video collection in our house:) I invite you to just take a look around you to see reading is everywhere. On of the games we love to play the boys and I is to run around the house and see how many things we can find to read:) We also sometime do this in the car while driving somewhere. The curriculum then for learning to read is life, life as your curriculum. All you really need are some ideas on how to expand what it is that you are already doing as such a wonderful job of learning with your child the awe-inspiring joy of reading, of writing, and of spelling.:) And here above I hope that I have given you some inspiration, a ball rolling to start with and take off within in fun and delight, playing and learning with your child:)

I also invite you to take a look at my website on the new page I have written about curriculum for other informational inspiration!:) There is info about curriculum being life and life being your curriculum on there as well.

Infinite Love and Light,

Dr. Patti "Diamondlady" Diamond, DD

Infinitely Universal Copyright Lifelonglearning4all.com and Dr. Patti "Diamondlady" Diamond, DD
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