Teach Your Child to Read

Once you teach your child read, you will have a child who can take ownership of their own learning. Teaching Reading is so fundamental. The process begins with exposure to books and environmental print, or words in the environment, that the child encounters naturally.

For your baby/toddler:

You can start by reading books aloud and encouraging coloring and drawing with your young toddler. As they have interest, you can also introduce forming letters.

For my kids, this often starts as them making cards for us and wanting to write who it is to and from. They also love writing their own names. They’ve always naturally started doing this on their own as they have so much exposure to writing just through their own desire to make things during their time doing art.

The early reading and writing experiences really go hand in hand. The awareness that the letters represent sounds is developed through just constantly interacting with the letters in print and in writing. It helps to have letters available in some form with toys or puzzles too, but it will happen naturally and doesn’t have to be forced.

For your child showing interest in reading/sounds:

This can happen earlier than many think – around age 3 or can be a bit older, like age 6, or in between. The Reading Lesson is the book I love for teaching reading. When the child is able to memorize the sounds for the first 5 letters featured in the text, then you can begin trying to teach them to read using The Reading Lesson. I start this out when the child is interested and in my experience, that’s usually around age 4.

I LOVE this book! I truly believe that any parent who takes the time to learn the proper pronunciation of the letter sounds and uses this book can easily teach their child to read.

The one book you need to teach your child to read:

Using this book along with a good attitude and excitement for learning will make teaching your child to read easy. The best part is, other than making sure you say the sounds correctly, you have to do zero prep. The book also thoroughly explains the sounds and has simple directions for the parent at the beginning of each lesson. Just follow the book! Page by page, it’s that simple. You don’t need other books or easy readers or anything. Just follow this book and teach your child to read.