Jean and her late husband Don, homeschooled their four children right here in Knowlesville. Here is a short excerpt from their book:
We never taught our children to read. When they were very young, we read to them. When they were three months old, they gurgled happily as we read nursery rhymes, poetry, and even captions of “first interest“ animal books. At six months, they smiled and pointed at interesting shapes and colors. When they were a year old, we read books with them, discussing the pictures and answering millions of questions. We often asked each other, "Where is the truck?" "Can you put your finger on the nose?" "Which flower is red?" and similar questions. The kids weren't reading words yet, but even picture books with no words involved verbal communication and a growing vocabulary, including concepts of space, size, color, action, and direction.
Between eighteen months and two years, each of them spent many hours each day with books, not yet recognizing many words, but studying the pictures. Despite the kids' early interest in books, we never pushed reading. We read to them every day, but they also chose to look at books on their own every day. It was unimportant to us if they learned to read at the age of two or six or ten. When we were reading to them we made a point of moving our finger along under the words we were reading. It wasn't long before the questions were about the letters and words as often as about the pictures....
(Read full excerpt at www.besthomeschooling.org )
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