Teaching Children to Read At Home Can Be Simple and Fun

Many studies have shown that teaching children to read at an early age can give them a significant advantage in school. Early readers have also been shown to perform better in other areas based on early comprehension skill development. These reasons alone are evidence to the benefits of teaching children to read early.

Since every child develops differently, it is hard to state what age is ideal for you to start teaching your child to read. A good rule of thumb is that a child is ready when they begin to show signs of verbal communication. This can start as early as 10 months for some children.

The very early stages of reading begin with letter recognition and word recognition, so start out very simply by introducing letters to your child along with the sound they make. You can purchase pre-made flash cards or make your own, then introduce one or two new letters each day. You don’t want to overwhelm your child, so keep it simple at first. You also don’t want to try and structure this too much. It is best to just introduce them during a time when your child is happy and relaxed. Take a few moments and introduce the letter, then the sound and repeat this a few times. Continue this throughout the day when the opportunities arise.

Always use lower case letters when first introducing them to your child. It may seem more uniform to introduce capital letters first, but these only account for approximately 5% of all letters in reading. It will be far more beneficial when teaching children to read to introduce the more common lowercase first.

Remember that your baby or child has a very short attention span and may want to travel from activity to activity throughout the day. Use this to your advantage by finding ways to turn each activity into a learning activity. Wooden or plastic letters can be kept around in a basket and each time your child chooses a toy, introduce the first letter of that toy. “b” for the Ball, etc. Say the letter, and then recite the word. This will help your child make the association between the two.

Teaching children to read at home is becoming more the norm than the exception these days. Give your child an early advantage by introducing reading as early as possible. It will help them to succeed as they enter school and will help them to maintain that advantage as they progress.