This was one of the most intimidating points for me in the homeschooling journey. I remember when my oldest hit Kindergarten age and being overwhelmed with the idea of teaching him how to read. I don’t remember learning how to read. I had never witnessed someone learning how to read. It seemed like such a massive feat at the time.
Enter Abeka K5. Having a boxed curriculum for the subject of phonics really helped me to understand the mechanics of reading better. It was nice to have the open-and-go format for that crucial year of his education. You can read more about my experience with Abeka here:
But it taught me as a teacher beyond just learning to follow the written protocol. It showed me just how incremental and intuitive reading can be. I’m so glad I landed on a curriculum that teaches reading through basic phonics rules and I can’t imagine teaching it any other way today.
With my next two children I was able to simply use the format of progression Abeka has. I have the lesson plans still to this day, which helps me to keep the basic idea in mind, while still tailoring it to our individual students and seasons of life.
Preface: For Rhythm & Ease
For little ones, I like to keep a fun basket of “school” things to occupy them when mom needs a free hand. For phonics/reading, I would have one or two scenes for the week, with a few flashcards I want them to review, and rotate them. They would start with a couple of choice board books and work their way up. I would also have set read-aloud plans to read to them daily. We also have audiobooks playing in our home as much as most people play their television. My husband and I enjoy books and desire to share that enjoyment with our children.
As they get older, it becomes easier to transition to a binder system or folders with page protectors. This teaches them proper care for their school items, makes their learning appealing, and provides a child-led learning experience. My first son was the only one I did a sort of scheduled one-on-one learning time with. The other two had their baskets available and were excited to “do school” like their older siblings. And if you’re wondering if this method is “enough”, my second child was reading easy books by four. And she now reads at an upper high school level at the age of ten!
The goal is to peek interest and to cultivate a love of reading from the onset.
Materials needed:
I included this section at the beginning because I want the reader to understand it takes very little to properly teach reading. A notebook or dry erase board, card stock for flash cards, and a variety of books at differing levels. It’s so simple to make and maintain yourself and if needed, you can make it all as your student progresses. I will also leave links to Abeka’s teaching aids if you prefer to purchase them, as well as any useful aids I’ve found over the years to homeschool reading on a dime.
ABCs
Shortly after learning to talk, most children begin to show an interest in learning the alphabet. To encourage this, have an alphabet display visible at your preschooler’s eye level. You can make your own or purchase a variety of different alphabet posters online. These free posters from The Good and the Beautiful would work nicely if you have a printer:
Flascards, letter tiles, magnets, and alphabet puzzles all work nicely for fun games. You can easily make or print cards and have them on hand. One favorite of our littles was to have them stand at one end of the room and each letter they named right they could take a step closer. When they reached me, they got a sticker, snack, or even just a hug.
Flash cards are essential in my opinion because they love the quick pace and they’re so easy to turn into play. It also introduces a method of learning that will be used throughout their academic career. You can tailor them to what you need. For your flash cards, you want your letter “q” to be written as “qu” (I expound on this below.).
Abeka offers “games” you can buy to go with their flash cards, but the concept can be easily replicated. They’re basically scenes on card stock that come with little characters and items to add to it. These were ideal in our classroom, and were used in varying subjects from pre-K through K5. You can find Abeka’s learning games here:
https://www.christianbook.com/abeka-k4-k5-homeschool-learning-games/pd/248377
Melissa and Doug makes a reusable sticker set that works just the same way for a fraction of the cost:
You could also use felt, or literally make your own scene. Put apples on a tree, cars on a road, or make paper dolls to dress. The possibilities are endless here.
Consonants & Vowels
When your child can proficiently name all or most of the letters in the alphabet, you can start distinguishing between consonants and vowels. You can specially mark these on the chart if you like, or create one of your own that has the vowels in a different color to distinguish between them.
All three of my preschoolers loved the Vowel Bat song too:
Letter Sounds
When we teach letter sounds, we allocate one sound per letter making it simple to decode basic blends and one vowel words in the next steps. Teach the short vowel sounds and the standard consonant sounds first. “C” says the hard “ck” sound like cat.
It is good to have a chart or flash cards that show a picture of each sound. This way, as your student goes through the letter and sound, they can easily see an example. Give your child a penny, counting bear, or pointer and have them go through each letter of the alphabet in the same pattern: “c says ck like in cat”, or “d says d like in dog”.
Once the know the short sounds thoroughly, you can start to introduce the long sound alternative. “Sometimes the vowel says it’s name like ‘i’ in ice cream. We call this the long vowel sound.”
The letter “q” is taught with a card that reads “qu”. This will help later when they get into sounding out complete words because we rarely see “q” without the “u”, but it doesn’t count as another vowel.
Short Vowel Blends
Once they have the basic sounds of each letter down, we can move on to blends. Abeka has flash cards for the consonant-vowel blends, and again these can easily be made by hand or with a device and printer.
The “q” blends are written “qui”, “qua”, etc. so the student learns the “qu” as a constant sound. This keeps them from getting hung up on the vowel rules with “qu” later.
The “c” cards are shared with the “k” cards because the short vowel sound only correlates with one or the other. So your “c” blends will look like this: ca, ke, ki, co, & cu
I recommend making your flashcards, but make them double-sided if possible. Abeka makes one side with the short sounds and one side with the long sounds:
https://www.abeka.com/abekaonline/bookdescription.aspx?sbn=167185
Along with the flash cards, Abeka offers what they call “blend ladders”. Each blend ladder is a full page and consists of one consonant paired with every vowel. For instance: “ba, be, bi, bo, bu” would be on the “b” ladder with a bear about to climb up it. Here’s Abeka’s set:
https://www.abeka.com/abekaonline/bookdescription.aspx?sbn=167339
These are absolutely brilliant! I generally use the blend flash cards as an introduction to a new blend, but rely heavily on the ladders. As cute as the Abeka version is, these too would be simple enough to create.
For larger classrooms or dedicated school rooms, Abeka offers full-color posters of each one to hang on the wall. Maybe I’m a bit of a nerd, but I think they’d be adorable in a child’s bedroom too.
My last preschooler loved taking his counting bears up and down each ladder. I placed them in page protectors within a three-prong folder and they’ve lasted for about a decade still.
Note: the same “qu” and “k/c” rules apply here as previously mentioned.
CVC or Three-Letter Words
Once your student can smoothly blend consonant/vowel sounds, we get to add another letter. This is easy to introduce with the blend flash cards or ladders and some letter tiles. This way, we can demonstrate how a consonant vowel blend can turn into a word simply by adding one more letter. We like to have a Bananagrams set or two on hand as they are the perfect size.
Alternatively, The Measured Mom offers a free printable letter tile set for both letters and some blends:
This is where we introduce the phonics rule: “If a word has one vowel in it, it says the short sound.”
Then we can move on to cvc flashcards with the same process. We want the student to be able to master the phonics sounds well enough to sound out any cvc word they com across. Again, make it fun. Play games, take advantage of boredom or downtime, and change up the methods to keep it fresh.
I add a couple of easy sight words at this point like “a”, “I”, and “the” too. (More on how to introduce sight words below)
Two Vowel Rule
Once the one vowel rules are down well enough to recognize and utilize the rule smoothly, we can add the next step. Two vowel words have their own special rule: “When the word has two vowels, the first one says its name and the second vowel remains silent.” They can be introduced slowly, adding a couple examples mixed in with the cvc cards they’ve already mastered. Eventually, the student will be able to notice the differences in them and which rules apply where. Repetition is key. If the student is stumbling over transferring back and forth between the two, ask if it’s a one or two vowel word and remind them of the rule that applies.
This is where it helps to write or print some word lists for practice. Have your students count the vowels and mark them with long or short symbols and cross out the silent ones. This makes it so much easier for them to pick up the rules as they read each one.
Sight Words
Sight words should be introduced (beginning with no more than three easy ones) as cvc words are introduced. Make cards to go with your phonics cards. They should be indistinguishable at first glance so that your student will learn by merely the sight of the word and not the style of card.
Stay with the same 2-3 cards until they remember the word. The amount of time it will take to move on to new words will vary from student to student. Just keep a checklist nearby of all the sight words and go through them systematically. I use the list provided in the scope and sequence for Abeka, but I’ve had both students who could handle more, and who need more time to cement it.
The student needs to understand that these words don’t necessarily follow the rules. Your student will try to sound them out at first. Just remind them: “We can’t sound this one out, we have to memorize it because it’s a rule breaker.” Here are some fun sight word activities we’ve done in the past:
Sight words and craft sticks file folder game:
https://homeschoolonadime.wordpress.com/2014/07/06/craft-sticks-and-sight-words/
More sight word games:
Special Sounds
Near the end of the Abeka K5 year, the student is introduced to what they call “special sounds”. To be honest, we don’t always make it this far in the curriculum because usually students begin picking up their own readers and books by this point. And immersive learning is always best when possible!
That being said, these can all be taught in a similar format. Some of the suggestions on the Abeka charts by this point seem redundant to me. For instance, “gl” and “tr” are phonetic pronunciations. But they add ones like the “y” at the end of fly. I’ve peen placing our chart up for the summer and I just have our youngest read through it with me once in a while. Occasionally, I’ll write more words that are pronounced similarly for him to work out too. However, these can be applied using the flashcards and games just as the others. The amount of time you spend on phonics after the basics will depend on the student, but I’ve found that my children all three took off rapidly after learning the one and two vowel rules and a few sight words.
There you have it! I fit all the basic how-tos of teaching your child to read within one blog post! There are techniques and extras I use along the way, but that’s truly how easy it is. I hope you’ve found encouragement here. Reading is one of the most rewarding things we can teach, and it’s really not as difficult as it’s made out to be.
I’m toying with the idea of making a book for parents to read, expounding on each stage.
What do you think?
Let me know if you have any suggestions or questions. I reply to every comment.
Home School On A Dime 