Learning to read early: Explode the Code and Calvin and Hobbes

Both of the kids learned how to read when they were four. I do not think that is an especially impressive achievement. I think many if not most could do the same with the right encouragement and tools.  Kelly and Christian loved to play the Reader Rabbit computer game.  We read to them a lot, often repetitively.  Kelly memorized The Owl and the Pussycat from hearing it so often when she was three.  We worked with the kids to memorize scripture from a very young age.  I think all those things worked together to help the kids learn to read pretty early.  Watching the kids learn to read was one of the greatest joys of my life.  I am not sure about the process through which Kelly passed on her way to reading.  I am sure it was gradual, but it seemed like it happened over night.  One day she went from quoting poetry we had read her and playing Reader Rabbit to reading Calvin and Hobbes.

Calvin and Hobbes played a big part in Christian’s path to reading fluency, too, but his path was not as direct as Kelly’s.  As far as we could tell, Christian did all the same things as Kelly to give him a base from which to learn.  He memorized a lot of scripture, finished two our three Reader Rabbit disks, and listened to an hour or two of read alouds every day.  Still, he did not take up reading until we found a mechanism for teaching him.  It became very clear that Christian and Kelly learn differently.  It might be a left brain, right brain thing.  I am not sure.  I just know that they learned how to read in very different ways.  When Kelly read well at a fairly age, it was such I gift, I wanted Christian to have it too.  So, I decided to make a plan.

I wanted the process to be interesting to Christian because I wanted him to have a love for reading.  I knew that part of that interest could take the form of he and I spending time together.  We both loved that, but that was not really enough.  I wanted him to have more than just a desire to spend time with his dad.  I wanted him to love reading for reading’s sake.  I started through a number of reading programs.  The first two or three did not work at all.  At that time, we often went to the Christian Supply bookstore in Beaverton, Oregon on Saturdays because they had a very good homeschool section there.  I found a set of workbooks called Explode the Code.  I bought the first couple of books.  I did not have a lot of expectations at the time about whether these would work or not because we had already decided several other systems were too tedious, not effective, or too expensive.

I do not know how well these books will work for other teacher/child combinations, but Explode the Code turned out to be perfect for us.  The reason we liked them was because Christian and I could complete two or three pages from one of the books in about fifteen minutes.  It was truly amazing.  He worked through the first twelve books (1-6.5) in about four months and could read.  I sat there for fifteen minutes per day for four months and watched him learn to read.  The only thing I added to the process were a few minor prompts and corrections.  He did the rest.  What a gift.  I do not know if that would would work for every child, but I bet it would work for a lot of them.  It was a joyful thing for both of us.

After we got through those first twelve books, we switched to Junie B. Jones.  He read all of them aloud to me.  They were interesting to both of us.  In the past, he had leafed through Calvin and Hobbes comic books looking at the drawings.  Now he would read them to himself, laugh, and read them to the other members of the family.  A lot of the words in Calvin and Hobbes were big ones, so he did not always read them correctly.  Sometimes, the thing he laughed about was not really the point of the strip.  Still, both Kelly and Christian read both Calvin and Hobbes and Foxtrot comic books a lot.  I think it was tremendously beneficial for their reading fluency.  More than that, they had something they truly loved to read.

Imagine how much more useful education would take place in America if every child had someone who was willing to sit with them for fifteen minutes per day for six months and listen to them read.  I honestly believe that is all it would take for the vast majority of children to read fluently.  I think the fact that an interested adult is looking on is more important than the method used.  We have some friends who are about the age of my parents who visited a public school close to them after their retirement three days per week to listen to kids read.  I do not know why any parent would not want to do that for their child.  If there was ever a win-win situation, this is it.