Homeschooling: My Twins Are Reading
As I have shared with you before, deciding to homeschool was not an easy choice. It was something my husband has pushed for about 4 years, but I was so reluctant. How would I teach them all of the things they needed to know? Especially the big things- like reading!
Now that we are in the throws of homeschooling, I can say the things I was most concerned about have come together pretty seamlessly. Last week, Nick and Luke read their first book independently. I was so proud and so were they.
Since our homeschool journey started, each week we focus on a letter. All of our Language Arts curriculum is centered around that letter for the week.
The first week we focused on the letter F. The next next week we added B. And then the next week M, then T, R and finally we added the first vowel, A. (I do want to add that Nick and Luke did know their letter sounds, or at least the majority of them, from attending Mothers Day Out last year.)
Once we added A, the curriculum instructed us to take the letters A and T and put them together and sound them out.
Naturally, this spelled at.
Then, if we slid the letter B in front of that and sounded it out, this spelled bat.
Then we could switch out the B for an M and that spelled…. mat. And you get the idea.
Now we have added H, P and S and last week was their first week to read an official book without my help- the book is called Pam. A short four page book that is included in this Fun Tales reader collection that came with our Sonlight curriculum (affiliate links) but is also available over on Amazon.
As each week goes on, we add a new letter and we get to read a new book that incorporates those letters.
And this is the story of how I taught my twins to read.
If I can do it, you can too!
I love your post about reading. Thanks for sharing. I as well at first was reluctant to home school my daughters. I have two girls ages 9 and 6. I started to home school my oldest half way through her kindergarten year. We were relocating from NY to SC rather quickly. My husband got a job while we were on vacation in 2009. We did not know where we were going to live or in what school district we would eventually settle into. So I started the home schooling endeavor. I have now absolutely fallen in love with it and it has rewarded me more than any other area of my life. I have been able to see the world again through a child’s eyes. Both of them look at things in ways I forgot about. It’s amazing. I also am learning about so many things. It keeps life so interesting again. I encourage you to continue on this journey as long as your family is able. Its a gift from God for you to be able to home school.
How old are you twins? Where do you live? Are you involved with a home school group?
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Traci
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Yay! That is so exciting! Congrats to your kiddos for reading and congrats to you for being such an awesome homeschooling mama!
I have twins also. they are still little yet but it will be great when they both learn to read.
I didn’t realize you had twins! I agree- if you work with your kids, they will learn 🙂 My son started to read & even spell certain words at age 4 as well…. shows like Super Why & Signing helped him learn quite a bit too.
We do have twins. Life is fun. 🙂
And we love Super Why too!
I also got these readers and I didn’t understand where or how to teach or use them thank you for the blog post I now have a better understanding of how these books work