How To Teach Your Child To Read
There are certain stages in learning to read and they should be followed in the correct order to maximise effectiveness.
Pre- Reading: age 2-3
From 6 months old the child should be offered daily short sessions with books. Starting with picture books, in order that they become familiar with books and find enjoyment with them. These sessions should be in a quiet comfortable space where the child gets your undivided attention. They will then learn, through repeated familiarity, that you start at the front of the book and carefully turn each page.
Your child will enjoy these sessions and in particular your undivided attention. They will undoubtedly have their favourites, which they will want to repeat endlessly.
There are certain skills that need developing to begin learning to read and write. Hopefully, by the age of 3yrs they will have developed these skills sufficiently to begin learning to read
Visual discrimination
This is developed by such activities as jigsaws – very simple ones at first. Shape sorting equipment such as posting shapes into their correct hole, sorting shapes into sets,e.g. triangle, square, rectangle, circle. Learning their colours which is a very important pre-reading skill. Visual discrimination needs to be well developed in order to be able to learn to read. Your child will eventually have to be able to discriminate between a “b” and a “d “
Appreciation of rhythm
Reading has a rhythm. It is good if your child can be exposed to and learn simple nursery rhymes and songs, particularly activity songs such as “the wheels of the bus, “heads shoulders knees and toes,” “if you’re happy and you know it clap your hands” “ring o’ roses” Learning nursery rhymes and songs also develops memory.
Auditory discrimination
Auditory discrimination is a very important skill that needs to be developed before your child can begin to discriminate between the sounds, for example of a “b” and a “p” Music is invaluable here. Playing a simple instrument and learning to discriminate between high and low sounds is invaluable. An instrument such as a child’s xylophone. Hearing their own voice through recordings. All these sorts of activities would help with auditory discrimination.
Skills needing development in order to begin writing
In order to be able to learn to write your child needs to develop large and fine motor skills.
Large motor skills: Learning to ride their toy car, playing with balls, playing on large playing equipment in the park. All these activities will develop their large motor skills.
Fine motor skills necessary to hold a pencil are developed by such activities as crayoning, colouring in, painting. Use jumbo wax crayons to start.
If your child has adequately developed all of the above skills, then they are ready to start learning to read and write. For the best examples of equipment to develop these skills go to our page on pre- reading activities
The importance of positive reinforcement
It cannot be stressed enough how important positive reinforcement is to your child’s development. Praise, praise, praise. Know that your child will be doing their best at all times. They want to succeed; They want to please you. Always give your child activities that they can cope with because failure breeds failure.
1 st stage in learning to read and write
Learning the initial letter sounds is the first stage i.e a as in apple not the letter name as in ay along with recognition and formation of the letter. Our first book in the “Learning to read” series “My First Phonic Book” teaches this Click here
At this stage in your child's development, we use only lower-case letters. We do not introduce capital letters at this stage as it is too confusing. We have combined this first stage with colouring as it is an excellent activity in the development of fine motor skills.
We will be going through the next and later stages as we publish more in this series