how do you teach english skills from home?

[fordfiesta]

Am not planning on educating my son fully at home (take my hat off to those of you who do) but I will be sending him to a welsh speaking school (i do not speak much welsh but am assured he will pick the language up!?!)and he will not learn any english reading/writing skills until the age of 7. My concern is that if for any remote chance or reason (ie family illness) i was ever forsed to move back to England then he would be disadvantaged...... i would like to teach him some english skills from home but have no idea where to start.
We read books alot but other than that i am clueless!

lots of TV and books.

I am not sure what you mean by English Skills. My son is 6 and this is what we do: writing practise is generally draw a picture and write a sentence about it, also emails for practise writing on the computer. Spelling we do through writing and reading. I don't do spelling lists. I did them for a while, but he would get them all right and forget them the next day. He can read fluently now, but when he couldn't, we used a combination of reading schemes from the local library. MOstly a phonic spproach at first, and then more mixed with whole word. We also use the BB schools programes - there are some excellent ones on during the day such as "words and pictures" and "fun with phonics".

how did you start reading skills then..... ds is only 2 (well nearly three) do the library usually provide teaching stuff..... sorry am being a bit thick.
Basically i need to know that he will be able to read and write at a similar level to other children in his age group.

Well, it varies child to child. With ds1, he was a phonic reader so I used things like Bob Books (american) that are totally phonic based. Also this website: www.starfall.com

With ds2 who is now 3.5 years old, he has a mental block over letter names and sounds. However he seems to recognise some whole words. So I use a reading scheme called Puddle Lane (not published anymore but you can get it on ebay). This is "shared reading" where you read the long page and on the short page are just a couple of words for the child to read and remember.

There is not one way to teach reading in my opinion which is one of the things wrong with school - the one size fits all approach. Look at what your son likes to do. Is he interested in letters and the sounds they make? Does he prefer to point to words in books? I would guess neither as he is only 2!

Oh, and no, the library do not provide teaching stuff. But most children's libraries have a section called "beginner readers" or something like that. They have a mixutre of different reading schemes. We just picked and chose.

I wouldn't use a phonic approach to reading if your child is being taught Welsh reading etc. as the Welsh language is phonetically written, in other words once you know the sound that 'ff' makes (for example) it is always that sound no matter where it is in the word. If you know the alphabet in Welsh you can read out loud the text you can see, (you won't understand it if you don't know the language but you will be able to read it out loud).
As a compensation people who are taught maths in Welsh tend to do better at is, as the Welsh words for larger numbers are more logical than english words.

My children had terrible trouble with reading English after being in Welsh schools for all their primary years, so much so that my daughter had to have reading help all the way through high school (akin to the help a dyslexic person would get) because she could not get her head around the illogical way that English is structured. BTW she went on to college and got a HND with distinctions.