Charlotte Mason Reading Lesson Part 3: Recognizing Letters 

Teaching our children to read doesn’t have to be complicated or daunting. Many children learn to read on their own, while others may require a little bit of hand-holding. 

Perhaps the pressure to teach children to read at younger ages may have resulted to many of the frustrations that parents and teachers face. Charlotte Mason lays out a few guidelines to determine reading readiness: 

Let the child alone, and he will learn the alphabet for himself: but few mothers can resist the pleasure of teaching it; and there is no reason why they should, for this kind of learning is no more than play to the child, and if the alphabet be taught to the little student, his appreciation of both form and sound will be cultivated. When should he begin? Whenever his box of letters begins to interest him. The baby of two will often be able to name half a dozen letters; and there is nothing against it so long as the finding and naming of letters is a game to him. But he must not be urged, required to show off, teased to find letters when his heart is set on other play.

(Charlotte Mason Home Education Vol 1 pg 201-202)

Once you know that your child is ready to start learning, we can go into the first phase, which is recognizing letters and their sounds. 

Recognizing the Alphabet

Let’s take a look at how we can train our child to recognize his letters. 

1. Identify letter names. 

“The Alphabet.––As for his letters, the child usually teaches himself. He has his box of ivory letters and picks out p for pudding, b for blackbird, h for horse, big and little, and knows them both.

(Vol 1 Page 201) 

Miss Mason says that many children usually teach themselves their letters. When you have a stock of wooden (or ivory, in Miss Mason’s writings) letters, a child can play with them regularly and through play, you can start calling out the names of the letters. This is usually the first step and is part of the playtime related to reading readiness. 

2. Cultivating observation: Draw big letters in the air. 

But the learning of the alphabet should be made a means of cultivating the child’s observation: he should be made to see what he looks at. Make big B in the air, and let him name it; then let him make round O, and crooked S, and T for Tommy, and you name the letters as the little finger forms them with unsteady strokes in the air.  

(Vol 1, Page 201)

But it’s more than just knowing how to read the letters. Charlotte Mason recommends us to use the letters as a means of “cultivating the child’s observation.” She suggests taking the observation from just a letter on the page to shapes in the air. First, we are the shape and let the child name it; then we encourage the child to make the shape in the air with his own finger, and then we name it for him. 

3. Cultivate observation: Draw small letters in a sand tray. 

To make the small letters thus from memory is a work of more art, and requires more careful observation on the child’s part. A tray of sand is useful at this stage. The child draws his finger boldly through the sand, and then puts a back to his D; and behold, his first essay in making a straight line and a curve. 

(Vol 1, Page 201)

Miss Mason differentiates the effort required to form the big and small letters, describing small letters as “work of more art” and requiring “more careful observation.” She recommends using a tray of sand for practicing drawing the small letters. 

4. Practice picking out the letters in a page of large print. 

But the devices for making the learning of the ‘A B C’ interesting are endless. There is no occasion to hurry the child: let him learn one form at a time, “and know it so well that he can pick out the d’s, say, big and little, in a page of large print.

(Vol 1, Page 201)

While this is not officially a part of reading lessons, Miss Mason encourages the child to know his letters so well that he can pick them out on a page of large print. As such, we can view this as more of a “test” to see just how well our child knows each letter. 

5. Phonics: Practice the beginning letter sounds of words. 

Let him say d for duck, dog, doll, thus: d-uck, d-og, prolonging the sound of the initial consonant, and at last sounding d alone, not dee, but d’, the “mere sound of the consonant separated as far as possible from the following vowel.

(Vol 1, Page 201)

As part of learning the letters, we also teach our children what each letter sounds like, and we do that best by showing the letter sounds at the start of words. This is the beginning of phonics training for our children. 

Charlotte Mason Reading Lessons Can Be Simple

From these steps, we hope that you can see that teaching our child to read doesn’t have to be complicated. 

Check out our other posts in this series to have a bigger picture of reading lessons in the Charlotte Mason method:

• Charlotte Mason Reading Lessons Part 1: An Overview
• Charlotte Mason Reading Lessons Part 2: Readiness