Ok, now that I am homeschooling (which I am completely new to), I am finding myself unsure how to proceed/what I need to be doing. My son just turned 5 last month, so I guess technically we don't need to work on a lot of academics, but he tends to enjoy academics and it helps the days pass faster if we have a schedule and stuff to concentrate on. I love teaching him and he enjoys learning.
My main question is about reading instruction. My son reads quite well and on many days reads independently for up to 3 hours. He usually does this before we start school time to pass his early morning hours. If he wants to continue reading past 10 when we begin school I allow him to read at the table with me for up to an hour of the 4 hour school day. So, he is getting lots of reading practice.
My question is, should I be doing some sort of reading instruction? Should we work of phonics or spelling or anything? Maybe reading comprehension? I can't imagine he would want to spend so much time reading if he wasn't comprehending the text and he usually uses his toys to reenact the scenes from his books after he is done reading, so he must be getting something out of it.
He has been reading for a long time, cvc words before 2 and early readers starting sometime after 3. He really stopped reading much when he was in preschool for the past 1.5 years and now that he has picked it up again he is reading way past where I thought he was at. So I guess I'm just curious if it's OK to allow him to learn reading through reading or if there are any specific things I should be doing to ensure proper mastery?
And here is a fun story about our new adventures in homeschooling:
I tried working on writing last week. He can write pretty well when the mood strikes him, but to start I gave him a subject and I did the writing for him so that he could focus on his composition. He came up with a few lines about the subject and I gave him some pointers about how to bring it all together. He had a fun time, but when I read it back he was upset I forgot to write "in the morning" after 5:30. So I added it in with a carrot and explained to him how to read the sentence with a little editing carrot. This pleased him.
The following day he asked me to write a story so that he could illustrate it. He worked on that for a while. When he handed it back to me I looked it over. I noticed he added a carrot. I had written "Jake's mom called him." He changed it to "Jake's mom called TO him." I thought that was pretty cute
