Delightful Reading Kit

With Elizabeth, our oldest, I didn't have a specific curriculum to teach her how to read. I bought a blend-and-word book and some easy readers. We sat through a-e-i-o-u. And at-et-it-ot-ut. And an-en-in-on-un. And on.... and on.... I'm sure she was bored to tears. I was. And I didn't see a lot of progress. She eventually could read words. But she never wanted to. That did finally change when Dad bought her an American Girl series when she turned 7. She read the series in two days and has been a voracious reader ever since.

Along comes Jonathan. He would be 5 soon, and I wanted an actual reading program to follow for him. I looked at several. So many out there! I'm sure I could tweak something for him. Hmmmm. I was very much loving Charlotte Mason's philosophy that I had discovered and was now using for homeschooling. She had a lot to say about teaching a child to read. ~It didn't have to be tedious. ~You could teach them using real literature. There were some programs with CM elements, but nothing that followed her method exactly. So I thought I could write something for my son. It became a longer project than intended. I spent an hour or so a day on it, when I could. Before I finished he had turned 5, so I began the part he needed to start with: letter sounds and letter formation (he formed them in the air and in a pan of rice). That's all we did in the area of reading that year.

The reading plans were about finished before Harrison was born. There was enough content and enough people who had also inquired, as I had, about a Charlotte Mason reading program being available, that I thought I'd send it out to some homeschool publishers and see what happened. The whole project had been bathed in prayer throughout. I received 3 answers back (exciting in itself!). Two gentle "no's" and one "interested". Wow! Harrison was soon born, school was on the back burner, and Simply Charlotte Mason and I began to tweak and add to and pretty up the lessons. "Delightful Reading" emerged and I couldn't be more pleased!

Jonathan at age 6 has now been through the poem "Rain" and loves to read it to anyone who will listen. It's a pleasure to teach him how to read and we look forward to moving ahead to learning an Aesop fable next.