In my last post, I told how my husband and I seized upon our children’s inborn love of learning and made it a lifelong path for them by teaching them to read as babies. We began by reciting the alphabet and numbers to them a couple of times every day from when they were newborns.

By the time they were a year or so old, they were so used to hearing the alphabet that they would try to repeat each letter after us. They couldn’t say them yet, of course, but they made grunting sounds, and I knew that in their minds they could hear how it was supposed to sound. Once they’d learned to say them, I introduced visuals, ABC flash cards, so they could associate what the letter looked like with what it sounded like. First lower-case letters, then when they had those down pat, we introduced upper-case letters. Children love a new challenge. I only introduced the next level of learning when they were ready, but they would be so excited for it, as children naturally are when society’s limited expectations aren’t forced upon them. They absolutely loved finding the shapes of letters everywhere, in clouds, trees, furniture. We made games out of making letters with our bodies, spotting letters on signs when we were out and about. They were observant and found letters where I never, ever would’ve thought to look for them.

The numbers equally excited them. We didn’t just give a baby a handful of Cheerios. We counted out the Cheerios individually in front of them. Eventually they started counting everything themselves. And by using objects like Cheerios, pennies, and the like, they learned simple addition and subtraction. They’ve been good at math ever since.

It was just a natural progression to move them ahead to learning the phonics. In fact, it was necessary, in order to keep them challenged and excited. And I will never forget the days, with each boy at about three years old, that they learned to put the phonics sounds together and sound out simple three-letter words. When they first caught onto that, there was no stopping them. They wanted to keep reading words all day long. They bugged me constantly to write more words for them to sound out. I will ever be grateful that I was there to witness that magic, memorable moment for each of my boys. I will never forget it and, as a lover of books myself, can’t imagine having that moment robbed from me by the school system.

With their box fully unlocked now (refer to last post), the boys voluntarily read books about astronomy, geography, buildings, weather, anything that interested them, while their peers were still learning their colors and shapes. We’ve rarely had to limit their TV and computer time because the majority of their choices in shows are educational in nature. Anything learning-related or creative has always been given top priority in our home. We’ve let chores slide if a child was busy reading; books have often cluttered the house with no mention of putting them away; I will drop almost anything to look at something that they made or discovered that they want to show me. Almost every birthday or Christmas gift we give them is educational in some way, and they love every one of them. They’ve never known any different. One boy once asked Santa for a Dymo labelmaker so he could punch out words and label all of his things. Even sitting in church, hymn-singing time was spent either pointing to the words or to the notes and guiding their hands to conduct the music. I seize teaching moments any time of the day or night to discuss whatever comes to mind or whatever they ask about. I love learning and want to share my excitement about it with them.

I doubt many five-year-olds know what the Taj Mahal is or where it’s found, the difference between the flags of Australia and New Zealand, or are familiar with Scott Joplin’s music, or the Willis Tower. I smile when I remember overhearing our five-year-old one day asking an older friend if he liked the Taj Mahal. He was surprised when the friend didn’t know what he was talking about. Don’t misunderstand me. It’s not knowing about the Taj Mahal that’s important; it’s engendering a curiosity about the world in general, which translates into more focused interests and passions later on.

Again, this wasn’t time-consuming for us to teach them as babies (maybe a total of 15 minutes a day, and beyond that, just practicing a “learning lifestyle”). It is my belief that almost any child would respond to this way of learning, probably being labeled as “gifted”, but really, just having their natural love of learning uncovered and shown to them.

~to be continued~

My third reason why our family likes to homeschool is to promote a lifelong love of learning in our children. This one requires a long description which I shall break up into two posts.

My husband and I began reciting the alphabet and numbers to our babies beginning when they were about three or four months old. This is easy to do since we could use the time during feeding, diaper changing, bathing, and dressing to do this. I figured, it doesn’t take any extra time, you may as well use those times constructively. Babies understand language far earlier than they can speak it, so it stands to reason that if they hear the alphabet and numbers a few times a day from when they’re newborns, they are going to know them before they can talk.

Try as I might, I have not been able to get other moms on board with this idea, I think because…it’s just too easy! (Like the Israelites in the Old Testament who were promised healing if they’d simply look at the brass serpent. Many didn’t because they expected healing to be harder than that, so they died.) Granted, it’s boring to say the alphabet this way for a year or more, and even feels silly doing this with a newborn when you can’t see immediate results, so it might be difficult to stick with. Secondly, it’s hard to introduce new ideas to a society so set in its ways. We are told that children typically learn to read at around six, and they’re not ready before then. And perhaps people think, what difference does it make?  They’re going to learn in just a few years anyway. Why the rush?  I’ll tell you why. It creates a love of learning in the child that sets them on a permanent life path for success. Babies come to us with a natural curiosity about the world. They take in loads of information in their first five years. That’s why babies crawl around getting into everything. They want to investigate everything. But then, a few short years later, they’re sitting in a classroom asking, ‘Do we have to know this for the test?  Because I’m not wasting my brain space on it if I don’t have to.’  Their natural love of learning is killed that quickly.

I’ve noticed also, the short attention spans of a generation of children raised on limitless TV watching and computer gaming. They’re so accustomed to all the technological wizardry, eye-catching graphics, and catchy jingles, that when a Sunday School teacher holds up a simple drawing, it just doesn’t do much for them. Teachers must be entertainers now.

Our way of teaching early reading is not at all pushing them. In our society, if you can’t read, it’s like you’re locked in a box. There’s very little you can do or enjoy. Teaching the child to read is like giving them a key to unlock the box and be set free. Our way of teaching reading was not work at all for the children. It was incorporated into our daily activities, our ordinary, everyday life. It was fun for them. They cannot ever remember not knowing how to read, and it has positively affected their thirst for learning ever since then. And it is so empowering. How they loved being able to read signs while driving in the car, labels on toys and items at the store, the titles of TV shows, and even reading the TV schedule to choose their shows, and reading their own talks they gave in church with no help.

This is even a foreign idea to many homeschoolers, who say, let them learn reading when they’re ready, even if it’s not till 10 years old, but a child doesn’t know what he doesn’t know, has no idea what he’s missing. I do know, though. I say give him the key and watch him fly!

In my next post, I’ll give specifics of how we did it.

~to be continued~