How does an 'unschooled' child learn to read?

[Sepia]

Unschooling to me atm is very much a philosophy. How it translates to actual learning at home is a bit of a mystery to me and I am not sure if I home school if I will follow this method....
Practically can you describe how your unschooled child learned to read and what your role in this process was.

[Ceres]

It was pretty easy! I've read books to my DS since he was a baby, he then naturally took an interest in books and reading and would 'read' them on his own. Eventually he worked out the relationship between the words and the pictures. Somewhere in there he grasped the concept of phonics. My assistance in the process was not much more than running my finger under the words while he read or showing him some phonics when he was struggling to work out a new work ("ph" makes the sound "f" for instance). Now he likes playing reading eggs but really he's just playing it for fun because his level of reading has far surpassed what reading eggs is teaching.
Unschooling doesn't mean teach them nothing, it means follow your child's lead in what they are ready to learn. My DS has been reading since he was about 3, he's 5 now and reads fluently with no help from me at all (although he occasionally asks if he's stumped on a word).

[GreenGully]

My boy was obsessed with letters and numbers as a small toddler. He would constantly ask "whassat?" pointing at letters and numbers. Initially I just answered with the letter name and then when he had that I would give him the phonics. He loved starfall for a short time and then moved on to Reading Eggs for a while. I read to him lots when he was younger but he isn't very interested in books at the moment (we also don'thave many with us as we travel). He reads on the computer a lot and has heaps of sight words now but deosn't read fluently - probably because he isn't interested in it. He is more interested in working out a tricky word than reading for pleasure.

[asimplelife]

(sorry, letters missing on keyboard still).

Similar path to the others. Has been ompletely different wiht my dd though. With ds he was ery muh a "what's that" kind of kid. He somehow learnt letters by sight lower and upper ase when he was 2 - just by us reading to him and him asking what things said I guess. Then when he was 4 he figured out phonis on all the sounds and from there just started putting words together. Oer time he learnt some sight words by asking me what words said. Reading for ds has ery muh worked in with writing - he asks me how to spell words and it all omes together for him. Oer the years he's played starfall and readingeggs. He's made obserations about how phonis aren't always "right" as in he asked me what the word One was and when I told him he said that wasn't right sine it didn't start with a W. He's not fluently reading yet. He makes up games (or sees them on eduational programmes and wants to do them) - suh as asking me to write a treasure hunt with one word lues that he needs to read and then it sends him to another plae et. He also likes to write labels for things around the house. He likes to make silly sentenes using those fridge word magents. He likes to write lists and asks me to spell them out for him. Sometimes he wants to de ode on his own, other times he wants me to just spell it out. I figure all are aluable ways in learning een if I'm doing the thinking for him a lot of the time. I don't push any written or reading with the kids.

DD on the other hand at 4.25 doesn't know all the letters (maybe 6 or 7 that she's piked up oer time?) but is starting to point out letters that she knows when we're reading, obseres when things on the floor (like a pen or fallen piee of rope) resemble a letter, asks what words say.

[Beatrice]

This is K's journey so far (http://www.joyouslearning.info/forums/showthread.php?t=793) :)

[Janet]

DS has always been read to, could recite whole books as a toddler. :uhh He learnt to recognise numbers from reading books and seeing them on tv. He could count to 100 when he was about 2. He's learnt the alphabet from playing on poissonrouge, from the Alphabet Song, from stuff on tv. He's been able to recognise the days of the week, his name, our names, train names for ages. Lately he started typing on the computer lots of names, animals, train names, whatever he felt like typing. He asks how to spell things, we talk about phonics which he doesn't get yet, he types it into a word doc. He has started writing letters and numbers as well. Anything he asks about I explain, I've got lots of early reader books for when he moves from sight words onto phonics. He's 6 in November. DD is just 3 and can recognise all the letters of the alphabet, can count and read numbers even double digits. He can also do some simple maths which I found out by asking him a few questions at a bus stop involving adding up cars. :lol It's great to watch them learn.

[Blossomtime]

Audrey reads well. She reads better than she thinks she does so she always gets a bit of a surprise :lol She's always asked me what words say and that turned to asking if a word says what she thinks it says. Programs like Reading Eggs and Starfall have been great because she loves playing them, so has picked up lots there. She also likes typing words. I haven't actively encouraged her, but she has come to me with pen and paper and told me I *had* to teach her to read and write (she went to a steiner kindy and thats where we figured it wasn't for her :lol). She's six next week and on par with her friends who attend school (except the steiner ones ;)). The other night she was sitting up in bed with a torch, reading to herself. DH and I thought that was so cool :D

[Sepia]

Thanks for those examples. Doesn't sound so different from what I imagine doing if I were following the curriculum guidelines.....
I am feeling really conflicted now though as I thought we would be sending her to a steiner school, so I have actually discouraged alot of this early literacy learning, and I am feeling now that maybe I did not make the right decision :(

[Ceres]

That's the thing that bothers me about steiner.. I can understand not encouraging a child to read, but DIScouraging doesn't sit well with me. But then I take more of a natural learning approach. You can't undo what's been done, just move forward from here.

[Belinda]

Besides, children always pick up more than you think they do, they probably know more than you realise!

[Sarasvati]

Similar to the others I guess... I wouldn't say we did HEAPS of reading to her, but we did go through a rather intensive reading stories at bedtime phase that really kicked off her interest in books (I didn't get the whole reading to babies thing, and as a toddler she wouldn't sit till long enough). She would recite stories from memory, rather than read. She discovered a learning laptop thing her grandmother sent her (I had hidden it) and used it to learn all the numbers, and then the letters after that. She spent a long time pointing out letters, and occasionally she would point out a word she had figured out (especially on signs, she was always asking "why does that sign say stop?" etc). She started using Starfall although TBH I think it didn't help much. Reading Eggs pretty much set off a chain reaction and she is reading basic books now (as a side note, I'm pretty disappointed that we paid for a 6 month subscription to something that she finished so quickly and now there is nothing left to do but repeat or play games! :lol). She has started figuring out how to sound out words, not always correctly but it's pretty cool to hear. She is 5 on Friday and yep I think I can say I have a reader. I posted a while back asking about how things like reading eggs fit in with unschooling, there were some really good posts in there.

[Ceres]

She finished all of reading eggs already?? They do add new maps from time to time, it could be worth checking back.

[Sarasvati]

She's finished all the lessons... AFAIK they only go up to 80? She is exploring the new sections atm, the my house and shopping stuff, and the puzzle park, we only just found out about those this morning.

[GreenGully]

My boy was obsessed with letters and numbers as a small toddler. He would constantly ask "whassat?" pointing at letters and numbers. Initially I just answered with the letter name and then when he had that I would give him the phonics. He loved starfall for a short time and then moved on to Reading Eggs for a while. I read to him lots when he was younger but he isn't very interested in books at the moment (we also don't have many with us as we travel). He reads on the computer a lot and has heaps of sight words now but doesn't read fluently - probably because he isn't interested in it. He is more interested in working out a tricky word than reading for pleasure.
Nearly a year later my boy has clicked with reading in a big way. We did little things like take turn reading alternate words, sentences and eventually pages of picture books. Something else which really helped was leaving him with a big pile of books at bedtime. He could work on his reading in private that way and he seemed to not get so frustrated. While we were on holiday to Brisbane recently I bought him The Big Big Book of Tashi which is a collection of smaller books and is about 400 pages. Each page has an illustration but there is still a fair bit of text. He leapt into it and finished it in a week or so and once he achieved that he seemed to have the confidence to read other books. He's since read The Twits and is now reading Snugglepot and Cuddlepie.

[Echo]

At 3 C knows a few letters & numbers, but mainly calls them nicknames - X is a 'train sign', O is a 'donut' :lol and M is 'burgers' aka McDonald's. :oops

[Kris]

Interesting thread.

[Ceres]

Well I think we know what your DS's interests are Echo!!