At last a Reading Method for every child by Mary Pecci.

I just had to write about this. It constantly amazes me how effective this method of teaching reading has been for us. I found this book in the library after reading a review in Mary Pride’s book when I was teaching my oldest daughter to read. That was 1986 and I have used it with all the children.

This morning I was working with Sandy and am just amazed [again] at how this method turns the children into self-teachers. After she learned the abc song, she taught herself to recognize the individual letters. I showed her how to sing the song while pointing to each letter until she came to the letter she didn’t know. She loves to practice with her giant letter cards and her little pink binder. I wrote the alphabet on the binder cover, lower case on one side and upper on the other. The cards are cut on one corner so she can line them up all lower case or all upper case and practice by herself. I also made her a cassette tape of the alphabet song that she listened to over and over!

After reading the Moore’s Better Late Than Early book, I moved back the age I started teaching them reading to 6 instead of 4 and let them play more, coloring, etc. but the same method has worked with all six of our children that have started school so far despite vast differences in their personalities and learning styles. It also fosters the independence of self-teaching, encouraging them because they are able to practice even these most basic skills such as letter recognition on their own.

It’s just been so effective that I had to mention it. If RC gave me nothing else, it helped me value and teach the children to teach themselves~! I recently had a mom call me and say she wanted to homeschool her child. “I don’t want to spend much money and I don’t have time to teach her much myself.” I was taken aback and told my 17yo daughter about the call. She told me, “Well, mom, she sure called the right person. You hate to spend money and you love for us to learn things for ourselves!” This is the daughter who taught herself to sew and designs her own clothing. She also taught herself to braid her own hair in tiny little perfect rows all over her head and to cut my boys’ hair, too. RC just flows into all the aspects of our lives.