Learning to Read….

So I have a 5yr. old stepson (well, kind of – I live with my boyfriend and our 3 kids) who is in kindergarden.  Jacob barely knew all his letters of the alphabet and none of the sounds each letter made when he started.  Two weeks into kindergarden and a new daycare, he was learning his sounds and doing great.

I, for the most part, have been the one to put him to bed every night for the last two years. We have been reading every night. After learning his sounds, he now is the one to read to ME. It is a great accomplishment that I am very proud of – both him for learning and me for teaching.  Don’t get me wrong I still read to him because who doesn’t like to be read to, but almost every night he reads a book or two as well.

His first book was THE NEW HAT. Now primarily he had memorized it since when I showed him the same words in different books he did not know them, but he was definitely learning. He now can read several words. Our normal series is the GREAT books, Bob series.

Ok, a side note – I also have a 16 year old daughter, Alyssa, who I taught to read with the Bob books. They are a great reading tool. I absolutely love them and highly recommend them. A personal note, I have been dating my boyfriend since August 21, 2009. We both owned our own houses. My daughter has lived with me full-time her entire life and I was the typical single mom. He shared custody of his 3 kids (the oldest was 18 at time – I didn’t meet her for a year ½ into a relationship, but that is a different story for another time). Anyway, we started shopping for a house together only 4 months into our relationship. It took a long time and I was ok with that since we REALLY were in a new relationship. However, we did end up buying a house together 3 months before our year anniversary. So now together, we only 3 houses with our individual’s houses being rented out.

At the same time, my boyfriend was trying to get primary custody of his 3 year old son, which after not much of a fight he received it. They still shared equal time with Jacob until he needed to start kindergarden. He now lives with us Monday through Friday and sees his mom on most weekends, but not every one.  His 11 year old daughter would also need to switch schools – her mom moved just 2 months before us – in with her boyfriend as well. So Lauryn had a lot of changes going on too. They visited both schools and both parents were fighting for her to live with them. Her mom had signed her up for school in her town, but 3 days before school was to start Lauryn decided to finally speak up and say she didn’t want to live with her mom and wanted to go to the school where we now live. So we have my daughter, his daughter and son living with us full-time (plus 2 cats and a dog)!!!

Now back to the reading – SO Jacob is now on his 5th Bob book and doing great and much to my great satisfaction he LOVES to read and is disappointed if on the few occasions we don’t have time usually due to being out too late. He will usually point out words he knows even in the books I read to him. I don’t necessary like that or think it is beneficial because when he is reading every 5^th word or so it makes it difficult to follow the story, but again he loves it.

Another great learning to read too is the memory game with words of course. We have to find the matching words and he has to read every card that gets turned over. I always put the words he knows plus a few new ones in to challenge him. This is a great tool because he actually learns the words without them being in the context of a book (to avoid the memorization of the story).

It is a great feeling to share the love of reading with a 5 year old and every day see more progress!!!