Introduction

I have often been asked how I taught my children to read at such an early age. I have decided this would be a good theme for a web page, so here it is. One concern I had was that I did not want my children to become over confident or have blown up little egos. I did not want them to feel that they were "smarter" than other children. Although each child tested into the school district's "gifted" program, I took it with a grain of salt. I told them that being gifted was only good if they were able to get a better education or into some wonderful classes. That did occur for the first three or four children, in our school district is really became non-existent. My children did not receive any additional learning opportunities, so it really was a moot point. I also told my children that I had yet to find a college application which asked whether or not they were gifted. Most colleges wanted to know whether or not they took advanced or honors classes, their grades, and their SAT or ACT scores.

There was an incident when I felt that one of my children was bragging about being ahead in school and he was under the impression that he had "skipped" a grade. I firmly pointed out to him that he had never skipped any grades. I told him that he had kindergarten, just the same as everyone else, but that I had been his teacher at home. I also informed him that the reason I did that was so that he could go into first grade sooner because he was a bad influence at home on his younger brothers and sisters. If he had been a wonderful child, I would have allowed him to stay home a bit longer. Needless to say, that took him down several pegs and I never again heard any of my children brag about being ahead in school. On the contrary, they did everything they could to avoid any attention to their ages. They have appreciated being ahead, but have learned to be low key about it around others friends.

Since this was really a big experiment for me, I have also tried to keep it low key. Those that have known have asked me about it and I share the information and have often been asked to write a book. But, have hesitated because the "jury is still out!" Now, with only two left in high school, I feel a bit more comfortable sharing my philosophies on early childhood education.

The Four Motives

There were four motives for developing this program. First, my cousin and I (she was living in Utah and I in California) both agreed that we enjoyed being ahead in school, but did not like having been double promoted. The other children would call us smart alecks and it caused a great deal of dissension to the point where we wanted to fail in order to prove that we were "normal."

The second motive was that although I did well in school and enjoyed learning, my brother never really learned to read, write, or do math very well. Because he was unable to learn this in grade school, he struggled through school and barely graduated.

The third motive developed during my college years at UCLA. As an undergraduate psychology major, we had to "teach" rats to press a lever and we would reward and reinforce this behavior. I thought that if I could teach a rat, what could I do with my three year old son? Then when I was a graduate student in Education with an emphasis in Psychological Studies, I came across a number of learning theories and was attracted to those that supported being able to learn more material at an early age.

The fourth motive was that I seemed to always have a baby and toddler home and realized that by the time I was able to get a child ready for school, it was only a couple of hours before I needed to go pick up that child from school. That often required that I wake sleeping children from their naps or leave them unattended. Neither appealed to me, so I decided it would be best if I simply did kindergarten at home.

Given these four motives, I decided that I should put together a strong basics kindergarten curriculum. I checked into the laws, and since kindergarten is not mandatory, there would be no problem doing this. Then, I could send them to a private school for first grade, and after that the public school would be required to take them for second grade, regardless of their age. The public school is also required to take them on their fifth birthday into first grade, since they have completed kindergarten, even though it was done in a home school setting. Not wanting to switch schools mid year, I kept seven out of the eight in the private school for the entire year.

The Curriculum

There are now so many wonderful helps for parents wishing to teach their children the basics. This is only my curriculum and how I taught my children during the 1970's and 1980's.

Shapes, Colors, and Puzzles

Around age eighteen months, the first puzzle introduced was the Tupperware round pull apart ball with different shapes. The child was also taught the names of the shapes. The shapes were laid out and the child was instructed to select the circle, square, and triangle. These were the only pieces used until mastery. Then one or two additional pieces were introduced until the child was able to select the shape requested and place it in the appropriate hole in the ball.

After the Tupperware ball puzzle was mastered wooden Playskool Puzzles were introduced. This was usually around the child's second birthday. The first was titled "My Birthday Party" and consisted of three large pieces: a birthday cake, cupcake, and hat. Each piece had its own fitted slot. After this was mastered, the next three four-piece puzzles with fitted slots were:
Colors I See: yellow sun, blue bird, red apple, and green leaf
For My Bath: pink fish, green soap, orange sailboat, and yellow duck
My Toys: truck, drum, ball and bat, and doll

When these puzzles were mastered, about eight seven- and eight-piece puzzles, whose pieces adjoined one another and were placed in a wooden frame were introduced, one at a time, until each was mastered. Then about four ten to twelve-piece puzzles were introduced. This continued until at about the age of 2 1/2 years, the child could complete several fourteen-piece wooden puzzles.

The next puzzles were those with hard cardboard frames. Again, the first ones introduced were four-piece puzzles and the same procedure was used until the child had mastered putting together 24-piece cardboard puzzles which did not contain any frames or lined guides. A new puzzle was never introduced until the previous one was mastered.

Other shape toys were used to reinforce those Tupperware shapes. Books focusing on colors were also used to teach.

Listening to Stories

Simple children's books, such as the Little Golden Books and Dr. Seuss were read to the child beginning about nine months and sometimes even before that. Often as I read to a toddler there was usually a baby in my arms being nursed. These books were read almost every evening before the children went to bed.

The Alphabet

A simple ABC book was often read pointing out the letter with its associated object, such as A for apple. There was no mentioned about upper and lower case letters. The child merely learned that there were to symbols which represented the letter "A." "This is an "A" and this is also an "a." These alphabet books were read from about age one through age two. By then the child could be asked to point out the letter "A," as well as the other letters. The child was never required to learn the ABCs by memory in order. The goal was to have the child learn the letters by recognition. This was usually accomplished several months before their third birthday.

When the child could recognize the letters "a" and "I," the child would "read" those words in any of the stories which I read to the child.

Phonics

My focus on phonics was on being able to associate a letter with the beginning sound of a recognizable word. The question was, "With which letter does (word) begin?" The first letter I used was "S." I would emphasize that letter. Such as "ssssssun." The child would eventually catch on that the "ssssssss" sound is represented by the letter "S." Then I would introduce several other words which begin with the letter "S" such as snake, soup, etc.

When I felt the child had mastered the concept that each word began with a sound represented by a letter, I would introduce a second letter, "B." Again, I would emphasize the letter "B," such as bbbbbbbaby. Other words were bbbball, bbbboat, etc. When the child had mastered the difference between these two letters, the game would begin. This was a game that could be played while I was driving the car. The goal would be to see who could get five points first. One hand held my points and the other hand, the child's points. I would be sure to rig the game so that the child would always beat me. This encouraged to child to want to play again and "beat Mommy."

After the child could clearly distinguish between the "S" and "B" beginning sounds, I would introduce the following sounds, one at a time, in the following order: M, T, L, F, H, R, J, V, A, G, O, P, W, N, D, E, Y, and Z. Again, no letter was introduced until the child had mastered the previous letter and was able to make the distinction between each of the previous letters learned. I never introduced the following letters, because of ambiguity: C, I, K, Q, U and X.

Reading

After the child could easily distinguish the beginning sound of words using the twenty letters described under phonics, the child was then introduced into reading. By this time the child had already been reading the words "a" and "I" in stories which I read to the child.

I was able to obtain discarded books from school districts to develop a library of wonderful readers. Every year the state would adopt different reading texts and several school districts held book give-aways. Some of these books "crackled" when I opened them and it appeared they had never been used. I was really grateful that these school district were willing to share these books with others, rather than throw them out. When the "Whole Language Approach" arrived in California, the schools either threw out or gave away most of their wonderful textbooks based on phonics.

The first books I used were the 1966 Harper and Row preprimer series by: Janet and Mark; Outdoors and In; City Days, City Ways; and Just for Fun. Then I used three primer texts: Around the Corner (Harper and Row), Our School (The Sheldon Basic Reading Series) and Worlds of Wonder (Macmillan Basic Readers).

About this time I came across some phonic-based readers from Lippincott and SRA. After these were mastered, I used about six first reader levels from different publishers and then went on to their second reader levels, and so on. Most of my children were into the third reader level by the time they were four years old and I felt they had a solid reading foundation and were more than prepared to enter first grade. I never read bedtime stories for my children after they were four years old. They read bedtime stories to me and put me to sleep. It was wonderful because I was simply too tired to read to them at night.

Math

The first goal was to teach the child to count to ten by memory and recognize the accompanying numerals. Whenever we went up or down stairs, we counted them. We used counting books to recognize the numerals, just as we did the letters.

When the child was able to count to twenty, addition was introduced. The first step being to count our three spoons. Then separating them into one spoon on one side and two spoons on the other side. "How many spoons are over here?" "How many spoons are over there?" "How many spoons are there all together?" When this was mastered, we used four spoons, separating them into 2 +2 and then 1 +3. This continued until the child was able to master addition up to ten spoons in all variations possible.

Subtraction was then introduced in the same manner. When the child could master addition and subtraction up to ten, a simple math book was purchased at the local drug store.

Meanwhile, the child continued to learn to count to one hundred and additional addition and subtraction facts were mastered. Eventually, multiplication and division were mastered. This was usually done by the time the child was four years old and again more than prepared to enter first grade.

Writing

The first writing was in the very simple math book which was purchased. The child learned to write the numerals. An alphabet book was also purchased, usually the Lippincott alphabet books, and the child also learned to write out letters, as well as his/her name. I was too lazy to deal with side effects of crayons and markers, so not much else was done related to writing. The children at this young age did not have the motor skills to be able to do much in writing. This combination resulted in poor writing skills. But, I felt the school should be able to teach them something.

Reading the Book of Mormon as a Family

Around the time the oldest was about eight years old and the others were three and two, I felt it was time to begin reading the Book of Mormon as a family. I would read the introduction, one word at a time, as the two-year-old repeated each word. Then I would read the first verse, one word at a time, as the three-year-old repeated each word. Then the eight-year-old and I would take turns reading the remaining versus. We would all sit on my bed and I usually held the two-year-old on my lap and had the three year old sitting close by. I would follow the words with my fingers. This was really sight reading, but it also helped their reading and it was amazing how a three-year-old could recognize the word "Zawahemla." He couldn't say it correctly, but he could recognize it!

Program Evaluation

As in all things, there are always two or more sides to every coin. In this section, I plan to do an evaluation on each child with the positives and negatives of this program as it relates to that child.

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