Because of the regular dose of picture books in our son’s life, learning the alphabet came completely naturally to him. Our son couldn’t talk to us back then, but that didn’t stop us from showing him the letters of the alphabet along with the pictures that went with them. One day, when he was only 2 years old, he sat on the floor, surrounded by library books, pointing to the letters of the alphabet and whispering them to himself. I’m sure he had no idea what they meant or what they were for, but the daily input of this information was captured in his head.

Later, a friend loaned me the book Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons, by Engelmann, Haddox, and Bruner. (Check it out from your local library). Now, before you roll your eyes and say, “But I already tried that and it didn’t work!” let me tell you how we used it. We did not use it the way it was intended to be used. We did not do the handwriting part of the program, we did not labor over each lesson for 20 minutes a day of sitting, and we did not use the book itself for the stories until much later.

What I did do was make flashcards of all of the sounds the book uses. In the front of the book is a list of the 44 letters and blends used in the book, along with a pronunciation guide. I made my letters and blends exactly how they appeared in the book, using a black marker on white index cards.

For five minutes, several times throughout the day, I would show a few of the cards to my son. I pointed to the letter/blend and said the sound. That’s it. I didn’t test him or grill him or make it a deep, serious, “I’m teaching you to read” session. It was just as natural as it had been when he “got” the names of all the letters of the alphabet. We were taking it in tiny baby steps by adding the sounds. It took just one month for him to memorize the list of sounds associated with the letters/blends. I knew when he was ready to move on when I would point to the card without saying anything, and Drew, on his own, would “fill in the blank.”

Next, after I was positive he had all of the letter sounds memorized, I made flashcards of the words used in the book. I wrote them in the exact style the book shows. Decoding a word clicked rapidly for him—it was the natural, next step up. I added new cards to our stack every day.

The key wasn’t so much in the book or method we used: It was in our attitude about the whole thing. Remember, my motto was to keep it simple and repetitive/consistent. I didn’t make it a big deal, I didn’t push him, and I didn’t get upset when he didn’t “get it.” I simply kept giving him short doses of decoding throughout the day. Lots and lots of pure, clean (free of extraneous visual and auditory information) input. I did the decoding in front of him, showing him how to do it over and over in short, quick sessions, until it clicked for him.

My “method” was ultra-simple and ultra-cheap, and it worked! Today, my sons are 13 and 15 years old and are great readers, able to both decode and comprehend what is written. I continue to read aloud to them; it’s my favorite time of the day. And the blessing I get when I see my boys read the Bible makes me think I’m really not so very different from those Puritans of old. 

Cathy Steere is the author of Too Wise to Be Mistaken, Too Good to Be Unkind: Christian Parents Contend With Autism, published by Grace & Truth Books (http://www.graceandtruthbooks.com/)

This article was originally published in the July/Aug 2008 issue of Home School Enrichment Magazine. For more information, and to request a FREE sample issue, visit http://homeschoolenrichment.com/