So much harm has been done through our modern educational system. So many people are not being taught the basics. Even students who graduate with honors have trouble comprehending texts beyond the seventh-grade level.
Why is this?
Because our education system has been gradually dumbing us all down, and it has been deliberate.
But we don’t have to become silenced victims; we can take things into our own hands and take part in the current learning revival right in the comfort of our own homes.
Today I would like to share some specific ways I discovered to take back the minds of our children by concentrating on the basic skills of reading and writing so they will be prepared for any and all other learning.
Last time we talked about the McGuffey readers and how they revolutionized my homeschooling.
Basically, McGuffey existed just before the awful ideas of Horace Mann and his ilk were put into practice. McGuffey himself was empathetic to the plight of children and enjoyed them immensely, but he was also a practical man. His aim was to produce materials that anyone could use to teach children to read and write, especially in settings where books were scarce.
I have used his books numerous times with our own children, and I would like to share with you some of what I learned along the way.
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In case you are new here, I’m Sherry Hayes, the interesting mom of 15, and I want to share some things with you today that will ADD to your life, not waste your time.
Whether you started homeschooling yesterday or years ago, if you’re serious about your child’s education, this channel, Mom Delights, has something to offer you.
I don’t follow fads or trends, I only share deep, but practical, truths that I’ve gained as I’ve homeschooled our 15 children over 37 years.
Lately, we have been talking about the Four Pillars of excellent education, which are:
- Gaining favor with God and Man
- The tools and skills for learning
- Content
- Application
Today, we are continuing our focus on the second pillar, gaining the tools and skills needed for all other learning.
I am going to be presenting the specifics of taking vintage curriculum and building the foundation of basic language arts skills for the rest of learning. Next time I hope to specifically concentrate on arithmetic instruction.
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When I started to teach my children to read, I was at a loss. I cannot remember ever not being able to read. My father told me that, soon after I was able to talk, I would climb into his lap while he was reading the newspaper, and he would point to the words as he read out loud.
Subsequently, I went to kindergarten already knowing how to read and write, since my mother taught me letters and words, albeit she taught me in all caps, believing this would be easier for my underdeveloped fine motor skills. This aggravated my teachers who unjustly scolded my poor parents into submission. The officials then told my parents I should be pushed up a grade, which my parents wisely refused to do.
So, when I went to teach my own children, I had no idea where to start, and I sort of expected them to catch on intuitively, which a few did, but others struggled.
Over the years I discovered many tips and tricks that helped me to reach even the most challenged, and I would like to share them with you today.
My first discovery was phonics.
I was not taught to read via phonics, I was taught to read via natural intuition and connections. We used those basal readers called the “Dick and Jane” books, and then I was in a special group who used stories from a little box with comprehension questions since I was advanced for my age. I remember in the second grade that our teacher used a book with the words “PHONICS” in all capitals on the cover with the slow readers, but I had no clue what it meant.
Then, in the seventh grade, I was required to take a spelling class using an old, old textbook that actually taught the phonics rules for spelling, and this was my only experience.
My mother had graciously discovered the book Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons at a thrift store and brought it home to me, and it was such a help! Through the simple scripting I began to see the genius way of helping children learn sounds and use them to sound out words. This book was a tremendous start, but there was more.
I later came across numerous helps in using phonics with my children, but the best was Ethel Bouldin’s book, An Acorn in My Hand.
This tiny, little book helped me understand how to approach reading for the children in my life who needed extra help to understand how reading works.
Just before this terrific book, I also discovered the McGuffey readers, and I began to realize that these were perfect for learning to read with a phonics-centered approach.
Just to clear things up:
The original, or the first editions, of the McGuffey readers were published in the 1830’s, with the very first book being done in 1836.
There were subsequent revisions that went on all throughout the 1800’s, and well into the 1900’s as well.
The first revisions were in the 1850’s, with William Holmes McGuffey himself presiding over them. They were necessary because the readers’ publisher had been sued and accused of plagiarizing. Subsequently, the readers were reissued. Although they are hard to find online, they do exist. The reader I shared in my last video was from this lot.
(Incidentally, there were also McGuffey readers published during this time which were directed towards the teaching of African Americans specifically, which I discovered only recently.)
The next major revision of the McGuffey readers was from the year 1879 and into the early 1880’s. These are the versions which all the movies about old times use, and the ones we can also find in print from various sources.
The 1880’s versions are also the ones you can in digital form all over the Internet, most for free, but Dollar Homeschool has these and some other versions of the McGuffey’s I have not been able to find anywhere else.
Also, with the McGuffey readers there were numerous copycats. Some were quite ingenious, others were not as good. The site Freedom Homeschooling has one of the biggest collections of these available.
But, even with all the different options available at our fingertips, I still prefer the original McGuffey’s for reading instruction.
Why? Because:
- McGuffey’s heart shows through. He loved children, and he formulated this readers out of that love. It is understood that he gathered neighborhood children and taught them to read on his front porch in order to write his books, but he was also drawing on his many years as a country teacher. (As you may recall, he was teaching huge classes of children when he was only 14 years old.)
- These books were mostly unaffected by all of the theorizing and educational philosophizing of the age. Yes, McGuffey was vociferous in his support of education for all Americans, but he was conspicuously silent when it came to the over-reaching reforms suggested by Horace Mann and his ilk. McGuffey’s methods were direct and time-honored. He was interested in the child, not the system.
- The books move so slowly and methodically. They begin with the sounds, and then move to “spelling,” or what we would call today, “sounding out.” Each lesson built upon another, and there is so much repetition that progress was almost effortless. The archaic illustrations have never put my children off, but they are seen as being quaint and charming.
I found that the original McGuffey readers, the ones he personally presided over, fit nicely into phonics instruction. (Mott Media produces the original 1836 set, and these are priceless and worth the investment. One of the other possibilities is the Swinton’s Primer and First Reader which relies heavily on phonics instruction and “sounding out.” as opposed to those using Horace Manns’ “word” approach).
It’s also helpful to have some flash cards when teaching basic phonics. I started out with a nice set from Rod and Staff publishers, and I used them for many years, but when I discovered Ethel Bouldin’s book I formatted my own cards, originally hand-written on index cards, which I included in my free printable reading program I call To the Top Reading.
There is something very important to keep in mind here: Reading instruction is more of an art than a science, so take it slowly and concentrate on the basics and adjust according to the needs of your child.
Some children learn to read easily, as I did, but then there are children like my husband, who didn’t read until he was taken aside at the age of nine by a kind teacher who offered him a Big Hunk candy bar for learning to read, and then went on to become a scholarly gentleman who loved all things concerning words (and for which I love him desperately).
As I’ve said, our own fifteen children were a mixed bag of both and everything in-between, but, in the end, it doesn’t matter just how you learn to read, it’s what you make of it as long as you aren’t dissuaded by the expectations of others.
And, even though you, the mommy, may have learned whole-word reading, you can relearn good reading practices by teaching your own children and become a better reader yourself.
If you’re wondering where to start and how to proceed, here are some tips:
1.Get comfortable.
Sit together on a comfortable couch, and don’t dive right in. Talk for a few minutes. Ask a few open-ended questions; such as, “What is your favorite dessert?” or “Have you thought what you would like for your next birthday?” and make sure you listen without judgement. A little bit of tickling is also encouraged.
After any feelings of pressure have dissipated, then you are both ready for the lesson. (You could even offer up a sweet prayer.)
2. At first, it will be mostly reliant on basic phonics sounds. I like to use some good flash cards for this.
And here’s a warning; definitely DO NOT learn the names of the letters of the alphabet first; that will come in time. Instead, learn the sounds, but make sure you don’t pronounce the consonants with an “uh” at the end (you know, for the d sound you don’t want to say “duh.”_)
I actually like to split up the basic sounds into consonants and vowels. Then I like to teach my children the two major vowel sounds for each letter: short and long.
I also like to come up with games for memorizing the sounds, such as making a train along the floor and have them jump on each sound as they say it, etc. I even play a little memorization game with the long and short vowel sounds where they must match the short vowel sounds of a, e, i, o, and u with their long vowel sounds.
3. After the basic sounds have been mastered, then we start sounding out, and I use both the McGuffery Pictorial Primer for this as well as my flash cards.
Many have asked, but I don’t really have a specific way to combine both the reader and the phonics instructions. You must feel your way through, since this is an art, not a science.
To reinforce the whole process using modern tools, I have used the free online game, Teach Your Monster to Read with our last children, which they thoroughly enjoyed and still have positive memories of (and this is coming from a mom who did not allow video games in our home!).
At a certain point the flash cards were not necessary, so we relied wholly on the readers themselves, going through the books at a consistent, but gentle pace. I developed a system to make the most of these readers by applying the ideas I had originally learned from Charlotte Mason. At first I used composition books for writing exercises, and then I eventually developed my own “lesson books” to go along with them.
Since this is about the initial phase of learning how to read and write, we will focus on the books I have used, which are these original readers published in the 1830’s (affiliate links):
And
Of all of these, the Second Reader is by far my favorite. At this point most children are ready to take off like rocket ships, so every lesson is more fun than the lesson before. I also enjoy the long lists of words at the end of the lessons, as this is a great help in teaching basic phonics rules and helps with spelling as well. I took advantage of these lists to help our children understand things such as root words, prefixes, suffixes, syllables (or “claps”), as well as other word patterns, even some rules of capitalization.
Using the lessons this way made language arts learning seem more natural; instead of breaking everything up into a separate workbook, we were learning it all in context.
After the original Second Reader, I moved into the McGuffey readers published in the 1880’s. This was mostly because the stories in these were a bit lighter, while the original third reader tended to have more lessons focused on death and more serious matters. The Original third reader also seemed to make a large leap in difficulty from the original second reader, although the third reader did include some good lessons on the Bible which the third revised one did not.
(I have read in different places that people call the revised, 1880’s McGuffey’s “secular,” but this is not true. These also contain whole passages of scripture and reference God in multiple places—we might call them Sunday school lessons today!).
I know that this sounds almost too good to be true, but as I used the McGuffey readers almost exclusively as our language arts program with very little effort on my part, the results were amazing.
It was almost like putting my children on auto-pilot.
The readers themselves, along with my program of copywork, narration, and dictation, made them such excellent writers that they have had no problem with college-level work at all. (At first they were concerned they wouldn’t be able to do the work, then they found it almost too easy).
I have produced a podcast episode for this blog post you may find interesting. You can listen by clicking below:
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