"Let us recognize that learning to read is to many children hard work, and let us do what we can to make the task easy and inviting." 

My second child is just about 8 and for the last year we've been working on things we probably should have focused on more in the earlier years. But alas, we cannot go backwards, so forward we go! 

Charlotte has much to say on the subject of early reading and the order in which you can present learning their letters & sounds, even word building, which then leads on to the actual lesson of teaching how to read. 

If you visit the page on Early Reading you can see I've gathered quite a few great sources for you to start using Charlotte Mason's philosophy of learning to read. It is a much gentler and enjoyable approach from some of the other ways. On that page there are instructions for how using this simple packet can be done the Charlotte Mason way -- as well as the specific pages she gives the instructions in one of her volumes. Just head on over there if you need more information on the how to. 

I am, admittedly, in the beginning of learning how to implement this with my daughter since I took another approach with my oldest son and while it definitely worked, I'm not sure it was the best and most enjoyable way to learn to read. 

We've been working through phonics using Explode the Code and though I'm not entirely sure if this would be Charlotte Mason approved, it's working for us. My daughter struggles with memory retention and this has really helped solidify letters for her. But I feel like it's time to start branching out to word building using our wood letters I purchased on Amazon* and some of the great resources available to show me just exactly how to go about doing this. 

I recently found Simply Charlotte Mason's videos on YouTube and they've been very helpful as well. Here is one specific to Teaching Reading the Charlotte Mason Way. 

While I'm on this journey I thought I would make my life a bit easier by creating a few beginning reading kits that help us in our first few lessons. I admit I didn't know what to call it so beware the title may not fit exactly what it is. Ha! 

These are free to download and share! You can Download the individual files -- or the last one has all of them combined. Just click on the photo to download the file. 

I found an amazing resource for Nursery Rhymes and feel like all of you should know it as well -- They had a plethora of adorable Nursery Rhymes and you can search through them according to alphabet or just by searching.

God Bless!

Julie

** Amazon Affiliate Link -- though this costs you nothing extra to shop from my affiliate links, they do in some small part support this page.