Should I Teach My Child to Read?
The problem of whether or not to teach preschoolers and kindergartners to read has always been a hotly contested issue. My personal feeling on the subject is that young children should learn anything they want to learn. If that includes reading and math, teach it to them. If it doesn't, wait.
My own children did learn both quite early. It meant they were bored in school or had to go to a higher grade for those subjects, until we started homeschooling. However, despite the fact that everyone said they would level out at second grade and be the same as everyone else, they didn't. They were always far ahead of their peers. I didn't level out either when I learned to read early.
The only important issues to consider are your child's interest in learning and your ability to teach without pressure. If you can make it fun and not obsess over it or judge his IQ by how he learns, there is no danger in teaching a child to read.
That said, don't spend too much time on it. We spent fifteen minutes a day on reading and another fifteen on math, not back to back. And we didn't do it every day. I asked if the child wanted a lesson and acted accordingly.
Avoid worksheets with preschoolers unless they like them, which some children do. You can also take worksheets and make them more hands-on. Writing is hard for children. We used cards for the numbers and signs (ordinary file cards with a number on one side, and simple pictures on the other.) The children laid out the math problems using these and small toys to illustrate the problem.
Reading was done gently. We sat cuddled together somewhere cozy to read from books. We also played games with the flashcards. For instance, my mother used to lay out my flashcards in a wavy line. We had a picture of me at one end and a picture of my grandmother at the other. Then I tried to travel to visit my grandmother by getting all the cards right. There wasn't any pressure. If I got a word wrong, my mother just told me what it was and moved it a few cards down (swapping with another card) so I'd get another chance in a few minutes.
There are plenty of programs available to teach your child, but I used a pre-primer from the 1940s to teach my children. Preschoolers don't find those stories corny at all. Dick, Jane and Sally books are available in reprints. They're based on sight reading, so you'll have to supplement to teach phonics. We did phonics very informally as we learned new words.
Whether or not a child learns academics early has nothing to do with how smart he is. Very intelligent children sometimes have no interest in early academics or may prefer one subject to another. It's really a personality and interest issue.
If your child can speak in complete, reasonably grammatical sentences and has a good vocabulary, can match, and knows colors and shapes, he can probably start learning to read and do math--if he wants to.
