Early childhood: A simple way to teach young children to read

Rania had known the alphabets since long (click here to read previous post about "Alphabets and Numbers") and at around the age of five, I began to teach her to read.

She had many books, including some free books from a publishing house located in my neighborhood:

"Membaca cepat dengan metode fonik" (= learn to read with Fonik Method)

Author: Sumarti M Thahir

Publisher: Aku Anak Saleh

We used the above books for a few times. The way I taught my little girl reading was far from formal. I didn't set  a strict schedule. Whenever Rania asked me to read a book, then that's the perfect moment. 

I also looked for easier ways to teach my child reading. One technique that we implemented more often was by using her favorite story books : the princesses story books. Rania demanded me to read  her the books several times a day.  She decided which one to read. Then we sat together side by side on the floor.

While I read her the story, I took a few simple syllables from each page. I  pointed at them, spelled them, read them and asked Rania to repeat after me loudly:

P     A      :    PA 

D     A      :    DA 

S     U      :     SU

This method appeared to be more interesting for her and we continued such simple reading activity every day for several months.

I set a regular study schedule once Rania was five years old and  four months. From simple syllables, she could easily read various words with four-letters such as listed below. She started to learn to write too, firstly by writing her own full name in capital letters.

Papa

Mama

Bibi

Mimi

Titi
.

Mami

Papi

Sapu

Bisa

Kota

Her daily exercises within the next two months were to continue reading different words such as the above and write them in a combination of capital and small letters.

At the beginning of December 2010, unfortunately I became very busy. The Taxation report 2010 for Syamsi Dhuha Foundation had to be processed. My maid also planned to get married very soon so she stopped working and went back to her village. Therefore I decided to take Rania  to a nearby writing-reading-counting course (kursus calistung) for two months. Rania attended a one-hour calistung course every day from Monday to Friday and showed a lot of progress. Her reading lessons were:

•  words with five-letters:

Pohon

Sawah

Lutut

Salah

Mohon

Pisah

Susah

Lebah

Rumah

Kasar

• words with "ng" and "ny" :

Buang

Siang

Bunga

Singa

Pelangi

Menyanyi

Menyiram

• More complex words and sentences:

Membuang

Memdorong

Membungkus

 Merangkak

Ayah pergi ke kantor

Paman suka membaca

Ibu membeli sayur

By the end of January 2011 Rania was already five and a half years old. She was able to slowly read almost all Indonesian words. Her writing and counting skills also improved. What I had to do next was to give her daily practice of reading and writing not only in Bahasa Indonesia but also in English at home.

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