That’s a trick title.
At least, I’m discovering (read: HAVING MY MIND BLOWN!) that given the right trust and “tools,” our kids can learn to read on their own, or likely with far fewer than 30 hours of “help” from us.
The guy that’s blowing my mind
John Holt is a writer, educator, lecturer and amateur musician who wrote 10 insightful (to me, ground-breaking) books about children and early learning.
In Holt’s view, learning is not the result of teaching, but rather a constant and universal human activity.
The part that’s blowing my mind right now
Okay, so here is something I just read that has me on one hand like, ‘This is so amazingly refreshing and new to me,’ and on the other hand like, ‘This completely rings true to me to my core.’
Holt makes the analogy, in his book Learning All The Time, that learning to read is, like learning to speak, and “extraordinary intellectual feat we all accomplish before the adults got it into their heads that they could “teach” us.
Parents don’t teach kids to read anymore than parents teach kids to speak.
We don’t teach our children how to speak. They learn by constant exposure.
I notice this time and time again with Anjali. She is constantly saying things I never “taught” her. They are rather things she picks up that Madhavi or I say in everyday conversation. In fact, many times she is less interested in the things I try to teach.
Holt agrees. He says,
Children get ready to speak by hearing speech all around them. The important thing about that speech is that the adults, for the most part, are not talking in order to give children a model. They are talking to each other because they have things to say.
So the first thing the baby intuits, figures out, about the speech of adults, is that it is serious…well worth doing.
SO TRUE! This is not only true with speech, but just about everything! Anjali wants the real tools more than her toy ones. She want the Mamas lotion more than her own. She wants to eat off of our big plates rather than her own. She wants to drink out of a glass more than her sippy cup.
what children need to get ready for reading
So how do we (how does Holt) apply this to reading?
Simple.
Children need exposure to a lot of PRINT. Not pictures, but print.
(okay, I too am freaking out a little (again!) as I type that because we have been surrounding Anjali with lots of both pictures and print. But let’s not beat ourselves up. At 22 months I am not pushing or expecting her to start reading now. But this is definitely food for thought)
Holt says that children need to “bathe their eyes in print, as when smaller they bathe their ears in talk.” As they see print more and more, these meaningless shapes, lines and squiggles take form. They become recognizable (like when Anjali recognizes the letter “O” or “I”!).
After a while, and without really knowing what letters or words are, they begin to see some patterns–that this letter appears here, and that bunch of letters shows up there. When they have learned to really see letters and words, then they can start asking questions about what they say and what they mean. But not before.
reading tools for our kids
Holt suggests (and I am apt to agree) that our children are visually exposed, in school and out, in the pre-reading years and after, all kinds of written stuff from the adult world. He suggests, for example, that a great “reading readiness material” is a large print version of the New York Times. The print is large enough, and the paper is attractive because it is part of the “adult world.”
Other reading materials to have handy from the “adult world” are maps, ticket stubs, copies of bank statements, instruction manuals, pamphlets, flyers, old phone books, etc.
Perhaps we shouldn’t be showing only videos or photos on our computers and I-Pads. We should be letting our children see e-zines, emails, e-newsletters and blogs.
finally…
I must say this sounds good to me. A hands off approach.
But don’t get me wrong. I am all to eager to watch Anjali grow and learn and explore and wonder. Holt’s Book
Or perhaps it’s unschooling.
What I loved about John Holt right away, was that on page 2 he talks about trust, security and comfort being at the foundation of a child’s learning. If there is anything Madhavi and I have been foster in Anjali from the beginning, it is trust, security and unconditional love.
