Charlotte Mason Reading Lessons Part 4: Word-Making and Early Spelling
Many parents worry about teaching their child to read. In this post, we hope to share some insights from Charlotte Mason’s advice on reading lessons.
Once your child is able to identify his letters and letter sounds, we can move to the next phase of Charlotte Mason reading lessons: word-making and early spelling.
Word-Building in Charlotte Mason Reading Lessons
How do we teach word-building or word-making in our Charlotte Mason reading lessons? Here are some practical steps:
1. Treat it as a game.
Charlotte Mason believes in making reading lessons enjoyable for the child. Her recommendations for reading lessons include tips for using words that the child can relate to.
Word-making. The first exercises in the making of words will be just as pleasant to the child. Exercises treated as a game, which yet teach the powers of the letters, will be better to begin with than actual sentences.
(Vol 1 Page 202)
2. Start with forming the syllable ‘at’ and use words he knows.
Take up two of his letters and make the syllable ‘at’: tell him it is the word we use when we say ‘at home,’ ‘at school.’ Then put b to ‘at’––bat; c to ‘at’––cat; fat, hat, mat, sat, rat, and so on.
First, let the child say what the word becomes with each initial consonant to ‘at,’ in order to make hat, pat, cat. Let the syllables all be actual words which he knows. Set the words in a row, and let him read them off.
(Vol 1 Page 202)
Form the syllable ‘at’ and then form words from it by adding a different beginning sound. Miss Mason emphasizes that we use words the child already knows. This is a crucial point, because words that don’t mean anything will not engage your child.
(In our modern day, we call these CVC or consonant-vowel-consonant combinations.)
3. Form other syllables using short vowel sounds.
Do this with the short vowel sounds in combination with each of the consonants, and the child will learn to read off dozens of words of three letters, and will master the short-vowel sounds with initial and final consonants without effort.
(Vol 1 Page 202)
After using the word family -at, try a different combination like -ap, -ad, -ed. (To help make this easier for you, feel free to download our Charlotte Mason International Letter Cards FREE PRINTABLE, which includes the different word families that you can simply add the first letter sound to.)
4. Let the child form words himself.
Before long he will do the lesson for himself. ‘How many words can you make with “en” and another letter, with “od” and another letter?’ etc. Do not hurry him.
(Vol 1 Page 202)
Soon, encourage your child to form the 3-letter words himself.
5. Do the same for long vowels (with an “e” at the end).
Word-making with Long Vowels, etc.––When this sort of exercise becomes so easy that it is no longer interesting, let the long sounds of the vowels be learnt in the same way: use the same syllables as before with a final e; thus ‘at’ becomes ‘ate,’ and we get late, pate, rate, etc. The child may be told that a in ‘rate’ is long a; a in ‘rat’ is short a. He will make the new sets of words with much facility, helped by the experience he gained in the former lessons.
(Vol 1 Pages 202-203)
Once your child masters the CVC words with the short vowel sounds, you can venture into the long vowel sounds by adding an E at the end of these word families.
6. Build words with other combinations of sounds.
Then the same sort of thing with final ‘ng’––’ing,’ ‘ang,’ ‘ong,’ ‘ung’; as in ring, fang, long, sung: initial ‘th,’ as then, that: final ‘th,’ as with, pith, hath, lath, and so on, through endless combinations which will suggest themselves.
(Vol 1 Page 203)
Some suggestions:
- Words that end with “ng”
- Words that begin with “th”
- Words that end with “th”
7. Encourage your child to pronounce words distinctly.
This is not reading, but it preparing the ground for reading; words will be no longer unfamiliar, perplexing objects, when the child meets with them in a line of print. Require him to pronounce the words he makes with such finish and distinctness that he can himself hear and count the sounds in given way.
(Vol 1 Page 203)
As you practice word-building, be sure to encourage your child to pronounce the words distinctly. This can help him hear and identify the sounds. These practices will help give your child the confidence when he encounters words later on in lines of sentences.
8. Practice early spelling
Early Spelling.––Accustom him from the first to shut his eyes and spell the word he has made. This is important. Reading is not spelling, nor is it necessary to spell in order to read well; but the good speller is the child whose eye is quick enough to take in the letters which compose it, in the act of reading off a word, and this is a habit to be acquired from the first: accustom him to see the letters in the word, and he will do without effort.
(Vol 1 Page 203)
Spelling is not a requirement for reading, but in Charlotte Mason’s reading lessons, she recommends early spelling lessons to come hand in hand with reading.
This doesn’t mean that we require the child to spell the word through writing, since their fine motor skills may not be ready for it; instead, we encourage the child to pay close attention to the letters that make up a word. Then, when they shut their eyes, they can practice visualizing the letters, spelling them out.
She recommends this as a “habit to be acquired from the first; accustom him to see the letters in the word, and he will do without effort.”
Why is this important? Miss Mason lays out a few reasons:
- Early spelling teaches your child the powers of the letters;
- Many of our English words do not follow strict rules of phonics, and the child needs to recognize them by sight (which is another aspect of Charlotte Mason reading lessons);
- The more variety you put into reading lessons, the more your child will enjoy them
Here are her actual words on these points:
If words were always made on a given pattern in English, if the same letter always represented the same sounds, learning to read would be an easy matter; for the child would soon acquire the few elements of which all words would, in that case, be composed. But many of our English words are, each, a law unto itself: there is nothing for it, but the child must learn to know them at sight; he must recognise ‘which,’ precisely as he recognises ‘B,’ because he has seen it before, been made to look at it with interest, so that the pattern of the word is stamped upon his retentive brain. This process should go on side by side with the other––the learning of the powers of the letters; for the more variety you can throw into his reading lessons, the more will the child enjoy them.
(Vol 1 Page 203-204)
Charlotte Mason Word-Building in Reading Lessons
Word-making or word-building is an important step in Charlotte Mason reading lessons. It doesn’t have to be complicated, and can in fact be a fun way of interacting with your child. We also incorporate early spelling lessons in order to inculcate the power of the letters and teach our children the important habit of paying close attention to the letters that form the words they read.
Check out our other posts in this series to have a bigger picture of reading lessons in the Charlotte Mason method:
