I think the best gift I ever got was the gift of reading – just as my Mom was taught to read at age 3, she taught me to also read at a very early age (not quite 3 but pretty close), passing along a great love of books and opening up whole worlds and vistas to my mind and soul, letting me share in other people’s lives, real and imaginary, albeit vicariously, through their writing. Being able to read provides me with a way to entertain myself and others, learn new skills, have a laugh, keep current with what’s going on around me, stay safer by being able to understand the precautions on warning labels, and so much, much more. Who wouldn’t want the people they love to have those abilities?

Developing a passion for reading, though, begins with being able to actually read. Teaching reading to others, though, is hard for most people. For most of us, it’s been a LOT of years since we originally learned, and we know how to read, but probably don’t remember how we actually learned to do it. (I know I don’t remember the steps – only that I couldn’t live without reading since I learned!)

If you’re not sure where to start in your teaching efforts, however, there are some great inexpensive programs/eBooks you can use at home to help you and whomever you’re trying to teach, whether it’s your kids or someone else who wants or needs to get better at it:

Uncle Rogers Reader: Teach Your Child To Read With Uncle Rogers Multi-sensory Phonics Learning System — Guaranteed! Download This Program Immediately And Begin Teaching Your Child How To Read With Linguistic, Multi-sensory And Phonics Methods No Matter What Their Skill Level

Phonogram Secrets Revealed! & Phonogram Flash Cards: Sensationally Boost Your Child’s Spelling, Reading And Writing Quickly And Easily With Only 45 Phonic Sounds. Research Based Instantly Printable Phonogram Flash Cards. Step By Step Lessons, Audio/video Lessons, Phonics List, Resources, & Printable Sheets.

Robot Reader Reading Games And Phonics Games: Reading Games And Phonics Games For School Or Homeschool Education – Full Color Professional Games To Print Directly From Your Computer – Print Board Games, Card Games, Bingo Games, Domino Games And More.

Frontline Phonics: A complete beginning reading program for parents to teach their child to read at home.

Learn to Read Kindergarten System by Hooked on Phonics
Phonics from A to Z (2nd Edition)
Month-by-Month Phonics for Upper Grades: A Second Chance for Struggling Readers and Students Learning English

And while the titles are a tad insulting ;), these are really great books to use, too:

Teaching Kids to Read for Dummies by Tracey Wood
Phonics for Dummies by Susan Greve

If you want to give a gift to your child or anyone else that will last a lifetime, teach him or her to love reading and to do it well. Remember, the earlier a person learns, the easier school will usually be, and the easier reading is, the more it will become a lifetime passion, helping out pretty much in all aspects of life….

(If you already know how to read well, but need to be able to do so faster, either for fun or for work, don’t forget to check out the 16-Minute Speed Reading Audio Program. It’s The Fastest Speed Reading Course That Doubles Your Reading Speed In Just 16-Minutes! As they say, “Double your pleasure, double your fun”…)

We had yet another successful book hunting trip while driving back and forth to Mom’s XXth School Reunion this last weekend. (If I give you the number, that gives you her age which then means I’m in the dog house for the next XX years… =)

The ‘hunt for the wild book’ is one of the most fun things I know. Going to yard sales, thrift stores, library bookstores, estate sales, antique stores, scanning the internet for bargains, and looking anywhere else a ‘wild book’ might be hiding is such a thrill for me and Mom.

We go high and low, and see all sorts of places we might never have gone otherwise and meet people of all walks/interests. It’s like small treasure hunts, with hours of enjoyment waiting for us afterwards as we read and catalog our finds.

And books are a gift that keeps on giving as they can be read over and over by the recipient or given to yet someone else to enjoy, keeping the book ‘alive’. Plus, if a book isn’t quite my cup of tea, it gets ‘recycled’, either through selling it or donating it – my idea of a nice ecological niche, keeping knowledge and enjoyment out of landfills, and into the hands of people who will enjoy such. (Of course, there are a few books that were either soooo badly written or in such bad shape they deserved a visit to the landfill, but even then, I tore off covers, and recycled the paper at the very least…)

For an idea of some of the ‘wild books’ we bagged, here’s just a small listing:
(We actually found a few hundred but it will take a while to get them all up, especially when you consider time out for reading!)

My mother got me hooked at a very early age on reading just about anything and everything (except for romance books which she considers to this day to be beneath her notice.) She, herself, was taught to read by age 3 such novels as JANE EYRE and THE GRAPES OF WRATH by her mother (possibly to get her out of grandma’s hair, but who am I to guess at grandma’s motives…? LOL)

I, myself, however, wasn’t able to read such lofty books until I was about 6 – guess that makes me a bit of a late bloomer, eh? (Seems I tested out at 12th grade reading level in 2nd grade – was it all the reading Mom got me hooked on at such an early age that made me that smart or was I smart to begin with. Hummmm.)

Now I mostly read for pleasure with my favorites being SCI FI, Mysteries/Thrillers, Biography, Star Wars related, Star Trek related, some Fantasy and even a few Romance books to mix it up. (So there, Mom!) Because she and I don’t overlap much (if at all) on our books of choice, the house is now threatening to buckle from the books bulging out the back. (At least it seems that way when you have as many books as we do between just the two of us and not enough shelves or closet space or floor space, in our case.)

The remedy? Sell a few of them off! At least, the duplicates to begin with. Then you sell the ones you only felt like reading once, but just couldn’t justify enough space for (without having to buy another home to house them all in, that is). Then you start hunting for books to sell. Which seems to only increase, not decrease, the numbers of books around you. Ummm – oooops. And the madness continues!!! (Anyone know a good 12-step biblioholics program you can recommend?)

The neat thing about selling books is that I’ve been exposing myself – no, not that kind! – to authors and genres I might not have read before, such as paranormal romance books, something I didn’t even know existed until researching who’s popular (and who’s not), and what other people are reading. I’ve expanded my biblio horizons which can only be for the good. (Unless you ask Mom, who’s competing for the same book storing space as I.)

So here’s just an idea of the things I read (and sell):