How Teaching My Daughter Helped Me to Read Better

Disclaimer this is not my normal post. Today’s is a post about me. I don’t talk about me often but this time I’m going to just a little bit. (Warning lots of text that may not all look right.)

Many years ago if you told me I would be blogging and making printables, I would have said not a chance. I have to work hard to try and make sure my sentences make sense. One of the hardest things for me to do is read and write. (This is one reason why I don’t often have long blog posts.) I have a very bad reading problem. I’m dyslexic with words. I write and read them out of order at times. I struggled all through school and even college.

One of my biggest fears is reading out loud. What do we spend a great amount of time doing as a parent? Reading out loud. I dread this still. When reading out loud in a class or group setting I would figure out what I was going to have to read and read it over several times. I would take the time to check the words that looked strange to me and trying to get the pronunciation correct.

Writing is also a struggle. I would mix up words or the word would be correct just the wrong tense. (I’m positive you have seen that on this blog if you have been reading a while.) Often times if I write a word to many times it looks completely wrong and I keep trying to fix it so it looks right, but still looks wrong. After a fast dictionary or spell check and I get the right word and it still looks wrong. 

I was a new mom with my first baby. The advice given me to was to read to her often. I was happy to do it, but made a lot of mistakes in reading. Even books I read a lot of the time. My husband would read the book out loud to my oldest and suddenly I would realize I had been reading it wrong or he would correct me. It made me want to cry, but instead tried to remember what the word was and tried to sound it out to see what I did wrong. I spent time looking over all the books before reading them to make sure I was reading them right. I was not going to let my problems stop me from reading to my kids. After we got more books and we would read a lot of the same books over and over.  Yes, it was boring, but reading over and over builds stronger reading skills.

The books in the house grew and 2 more girls came along.  I got to keep reading the same books and it was a happy time. I was improving in my sight reading and did not have as hard a time. It was not easy but I tried to progress forward. Even reading my own books was getting slightly easier. I will admit to after library trips reading over the books the girls got before I read them out loud. I put a few books back because it had lots of words and was harder for me to read. Yes, I could read it to me just fine and make less mistakes but out loud to them was still not as easy.

Keeping track of where you are in a book as asking questions is hard. I’ve lost my place while reading a book more than few times. But I did learn a few tricks to keep track of where I was:

• I would place my finger on the last word I read and put the book in my lap.
• Put a sticky note on the word that I could take off really easy.
• Try to have it be the last sentence on the page or end of a paragraph.

These tricks helped make things easier. I also like to point to the words while reading to them. It helps me keep track of where I am and not missing of skipping words. This is harder when reading to all three, but I love to do when reading one on one.

As my oldest approached Kindergarten because of her challenges it was suggested that I start working with her on reading and some writing. I searched the web for them and found a few ideas and started using them right away.  We did learning activities different ways with the same material. We started with sight words because they were easy and would always be the same. Helping her practice her words helped me. I had to come up with sentences with her sight words and vocab cards that made sense. These simple activities built up my long forgotten basic reading skills.

About this same time my oldest got into dinosaurs. Dinosaur names are hard but were easy because they have pronunciation guides for me to use. Long words like “pachycephalosarus” (pak-ee-SEF-uh-lo-SAWR-us). The first day she asked “how do I pronounce this dinosaur name” and she wanted to learn how you do it. I was in a panic. I know I learned it at some time but could not explain it to her.

About that same time I remember reading on a blog about the Leap Frog videos. I thought  why not give try it. I went out and got the videos that I could find for her. I ended up getting LeapFrog: Letter Factory, LeapFrog: Talking Words Factory and LeapFrog: Word Caper. We sat down and started watching them. Yes, I did say “we”. I watched them with my girls. As an adult I remember learning the sounds but most of those basic ideas were long since gone. It was like learning the basics of reading over again. We would spend time singing the song for the sounds that we learned in the LeapFrog: Letter Factory. I would mix up letter and they would pick a letter and then sing the song from the video.  After every video we talked about what we learned afterwards. Then we would take the sounds that we learned and put them into the words. It was reading and spelling at the same time,while learning the basics of reading.

Now back to the dinosaur names, this was something I could not read ahead or predict at all. She would pick a random dinosaur for me to read about. I had to use all the skills I relearned. I would tell her I had to break the word down first and then worked up to saying the whole word.  My oldest would often ask me to explain why I was not just reading the words like daddy does.  I would explain as best as I could that I had a hard time reading some things and breaking down words helped me say the words better.

We did other videos together and talked about them. Some of the videos we used besides the Leap Frog were Meet the Sight Words 1-3, Meet the Phonics – Blends and Meet the Phonics – Digraphs. We would build her reading and writing on the videos. I would think of new ways for her to practice and learn the words.

A lot of the printables I started making were because I wanted to have sheets for her to work on that would build her skills and give new sentences I could make with the words or a different way to repeat activities with the same words. I know that I’m not perfect. I might type the same number twice in a sheet, misspell or miss something, it happens. I’m not perfect. I’m taking one day at a time and learn from my girls as I teach them.

Over the past few years my reading and writing has got better. Is it 100%? No, but I’m making progress. Often when I make a mistakes now they are the ones to point out my mistakes. It makes me humble and points out that I am still learning. I can pick up a book and read to them without reading it first, but I read a lot slower and they pay attention to what I’m saying. I’m always looking at ideas to teach them and when I make something for them it teaches me as well.

As an adult I’m saying that teaching my daughters have helped me be a better reader and mother. I can also say I have a reading problem but I’m working on it one word and book at a time.

Cassie – 3Dinosaurs.com