_Above are the big and little letters of the Alphabet._
_Below is a story with all these letters in words._
I saw the big ox when I went to the Zoo last week.
It was in a den by the cave and stood near the bars.
I thought it looked quite fierce when it stared at me.
It made me jump when it put its nose out of the bars.
A man fed the ox with some hay that he got from a box.
It then lay down on the hard floor and had a nap.
I should not like to be in the den with the ox.
It is not a proper test of a child’s advance that he should be able to
read very early. Neither do we now make the teaching of reading the
chief object in first lessons. Rather does the child learn first to
master the difficult art of connecting spoken sounds with written signs
somehow, on the happy road from babyhood to schooldays, while his
mother still holds him by the hand.
The training of your boy’s ear in detecting the sounds that go to make
up the words he uses is of the very first importance. You encourage him
in the use of language by getting him to talk freely about what you do
together, describing in his own pretty way the flowers, birds, toys,
pictures that he loves. All the time you are gently insisting on perfect
pronunciation, clear, pleasant modulation of his speaking voice, quiet
breathing through the nose. Presently, when you see he is quite ready
for it, you lay stress on the sounds made at the beginning and end of
such words as cat, dog, puss, pig. He will soon copy quite accurately
the sounds of the various consonants, and find other words beginning or
ending with similar sounds to those in the examples you give.
Later will come the vowel sounds, and patient work will be needed to
make him see the difference in the various sounds of a, o, and so on. At
this stage it will amuse him to have a looking-glass before him to see
how the shape of his mouth alters when speaking. Let him practice
working the muscles round his lip and moving his tongue freely. It will
also help if he sings the vowels, thus--take deep breath, sing _a_ (as
in father) as long as the breath lasts; take breath, sing _a_ (as in
fate), in same way; and so on with all the vowel sounds.
You will, of course, make a table of all the sounds you teach him for
your own use, with lists of suitable words, and something has really
been accomplished in the numberless five-minute sound-lessons when the
child can break up the words he uses into the sounds that go to make
them--b-u-n, bun; f-i-g, fig.
So much for the first training in recognizing and reproducing the
sounds.
And now we come face to face with the much-discussed question--when and
how is a child to learn the letters (the printed signs of sounds) and
the names given to these letters? Some children settle this question for
themselves by “picking up” these letters and their names from
picture-books and blocks with little outside help, but they will find it
useful later on to know the _names_ of the letters and the _order_ of
the alphabet. See to it that your boy learns to call the letters by
their sounds, not their names, and help him to realize that the letters
are the _signs of the sounds_, used to tell us what sounds we are to
utter.
You have a sand-tray? Let the fat little finger practice making a round
_o_ in it, while the rosy lips form the long _o_, as in n_o_ and l_o_rd,
the short sound, as in n_o_t; or tracing crooked _s_ while he hisses
like the geese on the common, or says “puss,” “sat,” and so on.
If you have a box of good, plain letters, let him pick out the _m_ in
_m_ouse, the _t_ in table and in ra_t_. Your small blackboard will come
in handy, for he will be most happy to print on it in chalks the letters
as he learns them. Let him model their shapes in clay, draw and paint
them in colors, make them out of slips and curves of colored cardboard,
varying the practice as much as possible; and see to it that he is never
bored. He will soon greatly enjoy identifying and cutting out large and
small letters as he learns them from advertisements in big type, and
pasting them in a “letter” scrapbook, made by fastening together a few
sheets of brown paper. Guide him to class together _v_ and _f_, _r_ and
_l_, _s_ and _z_, _b_ and _p_, _m_ and _n_, _t_ and _d_, and the vowels
in their order, with a whole page to themselves--this with a view to the
time when he begins to study seriously.
But that is looking far ahead. We have now brought him to the point of
being ready for his first reading lesson. But do not hurry; give his
eyes plenty of distance work, plenty of training in reading Nature’s
wide-open book, before you put printed books into his hands. He is to be
a keen lover of books, so make him want to read, and see to it that he
is interested and happy every moment of the time given to his reading
lesson.
Here is the method:
Buy three copies of some well-printed simple stories; put one copy
aside, and cut up the other two, pasting the sheets on drawing-paper,
alternate pages face down, so that you get one complete copy out of the
two books.
Now cut up, line by line, and then word by word, the first little story,
and put the words in a small tray or box. Perhaps it is, “Thank you,
pretty cow.” So now print on your blackboard two or three of the
words--_cow_, _milk_, _pretty_, the child earnestly watching and
listening while you say the words very distinctly, giving the component
sounds as clearly as you possibly can.
Then hand him the tray, and let him pick out the words and name them as
you have done. Proceed in the same way with a few more words of the
story, printing them as you go in a column on the board, and when he
knows them up and down, in and out, the great moment has arrived. Your
heart will beat as you put the little book--the copy that was not cut
up--into his hands. He can read, so much at any rate, quite readily.
Note that there must be no spelling; it is “look and say.” Next day you
take word-building with the box of letters, and a fine game you have,
based on the words learned the day before. Add letters and syllables in
every way you can think of, always giving sounds, not names; let the boy
read, copy, take from dictation these new words for a happy twenty
minutes. He is now learning to spell, that he may be able to write with
the sound signs. Go on like this, reading one day, word-building the
next, till several sets of little books have been used up.
Let him dramatize the little stories and poems whenever you can; take
parts with him, thus laying the foundation of real, live reading aloud,
without any disfiguring mannerisms or self-consciousness. His stock of
words grows apace--ten a day will give over three thousand in a
year--and little by little, as opportunity offers, the more complex
sounds in our language and its puzzling irregularities are unfolded and
made familiar. Thus reading, elocution, spelling, writing, all advance
together.
[Illustration: The study of Nature should go hand in hand with the study
of books. Children love the outdoors--the trees, the flowers, the
grass,--all living things. Nature trains the special senses, awakens the
powers of observation, and creates a love of both the beautiful and the
useful.]
[Illustration: =THE CHILD’S PICTURE GRAMMAR--NOUNS AND VERBS=
A NOUN IS THE NAME OF ANY THING--A VERB TELLS WHAT A NOUN DOES OR IS
DONE TO