The hornbook and early literacy
As part of our studies on Jamestown, we are learning about the education children received. This can hardly be discussed without mention of the hornbook, and what self-respecting homeschooler wouldn't then go out and make one? For those who aren't familiar with this, it is essentially a wooden paddle on which a piece of paper was attached with the lesson and protected by a thin layer of horn. The lesson typically included the alphabet in upper and lower case letters, a brief phonics lesson and a scripture verse. When one lesson was completed, it would be replaced by the next. I'd love to have access to some horn and actually attempt to remove the thin, semi-transparent film to use as the laminate, but some things will have to be imagined. We used a cheap, plastic cutting board, a sheet I modified from an old pattern and some clear contact paper.

These were one of very few possessions that a child owned, as toys were not plentiful. A child's day was filled with chores and what toys they had were generally home made. The hornbook, thus, was an important possession, and a child grew very familiar with it. It was used in formal schooling, in the home for practice, in free time and even in play. "Battledore and Shuttlecock" is one old game that children would have played (a battledore is basically a hornbook, but with the lesson painted directly on the wood and no protective coating. The "shuttlecock" may have been a cork filled with writing feathers.) This lead to a more intimate familiarity with the lesson for a young child than our more modern tendencies to teach the same lesson in several ways, often focusing on multi-colored, glossy pictures which may distract as much as they engage.

My three year old has been showing some readiness to learn his letters for some time: he knows his shapes and has good phonemic awareness which he displays in some of the games we play. So we gave him a little phonics lesson on his hornbook, and have been continuing. I don't follow our practice of teaching first the alphabet and then the common letter sounds (in alphabetic order) and then reading simple words. Instead, we teach first the sounds, beginning with the vowels. Once these are mastered, we begin learning the consonants in order of frequence (m, p, d, etc.). Once the first consonant is learned, we begin "reading." Bear will practice reading the consonant vowel combinations: ma, me, mi, mo, mu, am, em, im, om, um, am, em. This means that not so much meaningless (to the child) information has to be retained before the child knows what it is all for. And review is continual as each consonant is added, and with it the ability to read not only common syllables, but words and then simple sentences.

This is essentially how I taught my daughter to read, but we used flash cards derived from The Writing Road to Reading. I prefer the hornbook. My son plays with it constantly, and he loves searching for the "a" and "e" in the alphabet, the phonics lesson and the verses printed underneath. It is his, and not so formal as flash cards. He is gaining other skills as he matches letters on the hornbook and he can do this independently. He can also try to trace the letters with a washable marker and use it like a workbook. And it is a nice, durable accommodation for the unique difference between how boys and girls approach a book (at least for my boy!).

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