This summer I have been working with my son on his reading skills.  He attended preschool last year and will be going into kindergarten in the fall.  He is a bright boy and knows his ABC’s, his numbers, and even the sounds letters makes, but he has difficulty putting those sounds together to make words.  I know that over time he will probably develop these skills, but I don’t want him to be behind his peers, putting the rest of his education basically on hold because he cannot move forward with reading.  Don’t get me wrong, I am not pushing him by any means.  I don’t want him to dislike school and the education process, I am simply working with him a little here and there to help develop his skills a little further before he starts school again in the fall, and even as the school year progresses I plan to continue to work with him.

One thing we have been working on together over the past month are the reading strategies provided by Reading Horizons.  They have a complete educational program that works for ages 4-adult, and even for ESL learners.  I am using the Intensive Phonics Program for Children Ages 4-9, focusing on the Kindergarten area of instruction.  The main thing we are focusing on right now is using the letter sounds he already knows, and learning how to put those letters together to make sounds.

The Reading Horizons program comes with a complete instruction kit, and also has a software program that is available as a supplement.  Currently I do not have the software program, but will be getting this as soon as the new version becomes available.  Since my son loves to be on the computer, I believe this supplement will work wonders in helping enhance the skills I am trying to develop with him by using the program and I can’t wait to get a chance to test this software out.

I will admit, it is summer and we don’t do this every day, but I try to fit it in at least a few times a week, where we practice about 10-15 minutes a day.  Any more than that and my son typically starts to get frustrated.  He is young, and he is the type of person who gets frustrated easily if he doesn’t “get” something on the first try.  We are working on not only improving his skills in reading, but also on accepting that you have to practice anything to be able to get it, and you won’t always be able to do it the first time around.  So far things have been going well.  We have gotten through the first couple of letters in the program and are working on the sounds that BA make when placed together.  He has a hard time with this because he wants to say the “B” sound, then the “A” sound, instead of just using the sound the two would actually make when they are together, think “Baaaa” like a sheep, lol.

We are going to try to finish up the BA sound soon and move on to the next letter in the grouping.  Stay tuned as I will keep you updated on our progress as we continue through the program, and hopefully we will be able to start progressing faster through the course as he begins to start understanding how these simple letter combinations work.

 

If you are interested in hearing more about the Reading Horizons program in general, I recently attended a training webinar and you can access and listen to this brief webinar by clicking here:  WEBINAR 
There will also be a similar webinar available each month that you can attend live, and ask any questions you would like.  Please contact me for further information or check the Reading Horizons website.

 

More posts about Reading Horizons

Months 2-3

Using the online Software

 

Disclosure:  The Mommy Bunch was provided a free copy of the Reading Horizons program to try out at home, however, all opinions are strictly our own.