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to teach my 3.5 year old to read? I have been doing LHFHG with my dd for K and using the Reading Made Easy. I have been doing LHTH for my ds because he wanted his own school, and didn't want to do what I did with his sister at his age. He liked the HOD format much better (smart kid)! Anyway, he's been begging me to teach him to read from the "red" book. I bought the RME CD and had the pages printed and they are in a red binder. Is it too early to do this with him? I don't want to discourage him at all. So if I do teach him to read using this now, what do I do for K when we move up to LHFHG? Do we just move into the emerging readers from BLHFHG? I don't want to get too far ahead of the game. I would love to get your thoughts/experiences with this.

I just started The Reading Lesson with ds for K and dd(3yr) got upset yesterday when I finished with ds because she "didn't do any" so I just opened up to the first page and read through the alphabet sounds with her. That was enough and she was happy. If she shows more interest I will just give her a page at a time that way she will take a longer time to finish.

We have recently started The Reading Lesson with our 4.5 year-old twins, & their little sister (newly 3) wanted to do a reading program with us as well... so, we do what I call her "reading program" as we go over letter names and sounds. You could test out how well your son did with RME- if he likes it, it would be just fine to continue at a slow pace teaching him as he in interested- if it's a bit over his head &/or you just didn't want to have to worry about that right now, you could make up his own reading program (& put it in a red binder ). You could even put the worksheet pages from LHTH in a red binder if you wanted to.

If your ds shows an interest and is not frustrated by it, I'd give it a try. I'd probably do him separately from dd though, so he doesn't feel pressure to keep up with her, and so he doesn't hold her back. Phonics is done anywhere from 1-3 years, depending on when a child is ready for the emerging reader's set. So, if you finish phonics with him this year, and he's ready for the Emerging Reader's Set, you could certainly start it slowly with him then - or, you could do another year of phonics using a different program (especially since he's young), such as The Reading Lesson, and then go into the emerging reader's set after that.

I think the point is to be ready to set phonics aside if you begin it early with him and for some reason it's not going well. I'm saying this because I personally can see that as a pitfall for me. Once I begin something, I can be dogged about finishing it, even if it's not going well or I know I started it too early. Potty-training my middle ds comes to mind for me as I share this! Anyway, you may totally not have this personality trait I have, but if you do, just be sure you can allow yourself to set it aside if it's not going well, and pick it back up later.

In Christ,
Julie