Reading is an essential skill in life. Learning to read is one of those big milestones, right up there with learning to walk and talk. The moment your child first reads “the cat sat on the mat” and you feel like setting off fire works is one of those moments of parenting highs.
Learning to read starts from the day a child is born. Before they learn to read they need to understand language. This means talking to our children and reading to them over and over again. Often we will end up reading the same book so many times that they will eventually have it memorised, such is the case for my children and the book Room on the Broom.
When is the Best Time to Teach a Child to Read
Just like learning to walk and talk, learning to read doesn’t happen at the same time for every child. Before you even begin to teach your child to read you want to be sure that they meet all five of the requirements for reading readiness. If you become too eager to teach your child to read, despite your best intentions it will be a frustrating experience for both of you. It could push your child back and increase their resistance to any kind of reading instruction. You don’t want to them to associate reading with a negative experience.
Usually around the age of five kids will start to show the signs of being ready to read. It could also take a few more years but I have also known three year olds who have taught themselves to read. There really is no perfect age to learn. Society tends to make us feel like if our children aren’t reading by the end of kindergarten then there is something wrong and intervention is needed. This is simply not true. In many countries such as Finland they don’t start teaching children to read until the age of seven. By then end of the year there is no difference between those children who learnt to read at seven and those who learnt at five.
Children learn best when they are emotionally and developmentally ready to learn. Boys will often take longer to be ready than girls. Once a child is ready to learn it will come naturally and very quickly.
What are the Signs of Reading Readiness?
1. They are Interested
This is the biggest sign that your child may be ready to start to learn to read. If they are motivated and eager to learn they are more willing to put in the effort that it requires.
You can encourage their interest in learning by continuing to read to them. Read, read and read some more. Children who are read to often, will become children who love to read. Reading to them exposes them to language and language patterns. It teaches them that words and letters on a page have meaning. It shows them how to use and book, which way you hold it, which way to turn the pages etc.
Help them to point out letters they do know in every day situations. The big C for Costco for example. Teach them what their name looks like and how to recognise it. My kids learnt how to spell and read by typing out words on YouTube! Real life application right there, encouraged by motivation!
Your Child Can Remember and Retell Stories
Reading is more than just reading the words. There is no point in being able to read if you can not comprehend what you have read. This is where the ability to be able to regurgitate information they have learnt comes in. It means they are are able to absorb the information then repeat what they have learnt in their own words.
You can observe this skill in your child when you ask them questions while you are reading to them to test their comprehension. If you have ever noticed your child “reading” a book they have heard you read to them over and over you will know what I mean. They will make up the story in their own words based on how they remember it.
You can encourage this skill by reading with your child. Be sure to read them good quality literature that is well written and engaging. Ask lots of questions and talk about what is happening in the pictures. This all helps with a child’s comprehension level. I will often stop reading to help clarify what certain words mean and discuss certain points when appropriate.
Book Awareness and Print Awareness
Book awareness relates to if a child knows what a book is and how it is used. Do they know which is the front and back. Can the determine which way the pages are turned etc.
Print awareness is understanding what words are. That when you join letter together that they make words. The knowledge that between words are spaces to separate words. They know that words are read left to right and where you start to read from.
Book awareness will come fairly naturally as you read to them. Print awareness requires a little more effort but is easily taught while you enjoy your reading time together. You could accomplish this by helping your child to point under each word as you read to them.
Phonological Awareness
It is a big word but it simple means that your child can hear the different sounds in words. There are lots of ways to develop this skill. It is best done through fun games as learning through play is how children of this age learn best.
Rhyming is a great way to increase phonological awareness. You will notice that many children’s books involve a lot of rhyming this is the reason for this. Encourage your child to guess the next word as you read this books. They will quickly pick up on the rhyming nature.
Sing songs they know well but replace the first letter of the word and let them correct your silly mistake. For example Head shoulders “bees” and toes.
Learning to differentiate syllables also comes into this. Clapping syllables is one of my children’s favourites past times and I’m not even kidding. They love it when I give them extremely long words to try and clap out.
Eye spy is also a great way to help children become phonetically aware. Keep it simple and small such as I am thinking of a animal that starts with /d/. Don’t use the name of the letter but the sound instead.
Letter Knowledge
Finally comes letter knowledge. For a child to be ready to learn to read they need to know their letters. This means both upper and lower case as well as all their sounds. There are so many ways to accomplish this. Pinterest is going to be your very best friend.
When I polled a large group of homeschooling moms the one tool that most of them used was Leap Frog Letter Factory. It is on Netflix. This is how my kids have learnt too. They make it fun and natural for children to learn their letters.
Along with using Leap Frog I also had lots of games like bingo and a cute dinosaur chart that they were able to put stickers on as they passed off their letters. Once they passed them all off we had a special date to celebrate being ready to learn to read.
There a many different curriculums that perfect for teaching this aspect of reading readiness. I have personally really loved All About Reading’s Pre-Reading level. Even though I use a different language arts curriculum for my older children I still use this program for teaching early reading. It does an excellent job at keeping it fun and exciting as well as being very easy for me to teach. It is open and go which saves so much time searching around for different resources. My older kids still love to play the games that come with it.
How Long Will it Take?
How long is a piece of string? It all depends on the child. If you wait until they are ready they will more than likely pick it up much quicker than if you are trying to teach them when they are not ready. This was one of my biggest mistakes. I pushed and pushed my oldest child to learn when he wasn’t ready. He was the ‘right age’ but the readiness just wasn’t there.
I had some wise advice from a well seasoned homeschooler who told me to wait. I was already feeling like a failure and incapable of teaching my child so I decided I didn’t have much to lose. I stopped trying to teach him and we just went back to reading together and working on the readiness skills previously mentioned. Four months later I felt we were ready to try again. After only two months he was reading fluently and went from barely making out simple 3-4 letter words to being able to independently reading chapter books. We are now a few year down the line and he can read anything thrown at him and is years above his peers in his reading and comprehension skills.
My advice is that same as that wise old homeschooler advice to me. Don’t push them if they aren’t ready. Once they are ready it will just click and it will require very little effort.
What is the Best Way to Teach a Child to Read
Read to your child
I can not stress this enough. Hearing language, touching and engaging with books all leads to learning to read. If you develop a love of reading in your child it gives them the intrinsic motivation to want to learn how to read for themselves. My oldest two children really advanced in their reading when they became frustrated when they couldn’t read ahead in the chapter books we were reading. Until one night they sat up in bed together and painstakingly decoding every word, each night they got faster and faster until my oldest was reading aloud with funny voices and everything.
Teach Sight Words
These are words that are hard to decode because they don’t follow the rules or they are words that occur very frequently. Once a child has mastered a good chunk of sight words reading will become more exciting because they can read at least a little of what is in front of them.
Bingo and go fish are fantastic ways to learn sight words.
Notice Letters and Words in Real Life
Children need context when they are learning. Let them take time to decode the words on the menu at the restaurant, hot dog is always a winner! Point out words they they could decode when you are driving along or in the store. This gives them a boost in confidence as well
Invest in a Good Reading Program
I really like having a good solid program to use. It takes the stress off me and ensures that I am covering all the bases. Reading programs teach children in the most proven sequence. It isn’t quite as simple as teaching letters in alphabetical order. I love how they have all the games, learning activities, readers and absolutely everything that you would need all bundled into one package.
Reading programs are expensive but they are also an investment. They can be used for multiple children and have a high resale value once you have finished. This also means there are lots of second hand options out there too.
Reading Curriculums
All About Reading
This is one I can highly recommend especially for it’s pre-reading level as well as level one. By then end of these two levels your child will be able to read confidently.
The Good and the Beautiful
I use this curriculum for my older children and it is wonderful. It’s Pre-k and level one programs are very well presented and thorough. It is a Christian curriculum so if that is something that is of interest to you you may want to look into it. If I didn’t already have All About Reading on my shelf I would be happy to use this for early reading too. They are both brilliant.
Teach your Child to Read in 100 Lessons
Many homeschoolers use this book also. It is very cut and dry but definitely gets the job done. You may want to supplement it with a bit more fun in the way of games etc though.
ABC Mouse
ABC Mouse is a fun and interactive online reading program. There are six levels that move you from pre-k all the way up to the end of first grade. Children love that it is fun and engaing which makes learning to read all that more easier. There are over 450 lessons for them to get through so it will definitely keep them busy.
I love that it starts in the early years getting them ready to learn to read by ensuring they have mastered all the reading readiness steps before it moves them on to proper reading. The children are pushed forward at just the right speed for them.
Reading Eggs
I love Reading Eggs and so do my kids. It is very similar to ABC Mouse and you would be doing well with either one. Reading Eggs just happened to be the one I chose and I am extremely happy with it. The one aspect that drew me towards Reading Eggs was that is was able to be switched to Australian accents which was a BIG deal for me since we live in Australia. My kids had been learning with another online reading program and started developing American accents. There is nothing wrong with having an American accent but people were starting to question how much television we were allowing them to watch!
Reading Eggs is great for being on the go. You can take it with you on your iPad or tablet. I also really liked that you could purchase the books and activity books in hard copy. I loved that I was able to reinforce what they were learning online with pencil and paper work too.
How to Motivate the Reluctant Reader
If despite all your hard work you still have a child that is not all that impressed with reading then take a break. There are a few things you can do to help motivate them in their reading journey after you give yourselves both a bit of a break.
Identify What the Problem is
Sometimes there is a fairly simple explanation as to why they don’t want to read. Perhaps they are reading at a level that is too high and they are becoming demotivated because it really is too hard. Lack of confidence is a great demotivated. You may want to move them right down a level or two to build that confidence back up.
Other issues may stem from something a bit deeper. You may want to check if there is a learning issue such as dyslexia. This can cause huge problems for children learning to read but there are so many amazing resources out there that can help you and your child to get on the right track.
Are they just bored? Sometimes it takes awhile to find the right book or series to light that fire. Keep persisting in the mean time read them a wide array of books to hopefully peak their interest somewhere.
Use Audiobooks
Audiobooks are a great way to ignite the reading flame. They take the pressure off actually reading and allow the child to become immersed in the world and language of the book. It increases their love of books which will naturally flow over into their love of reading. Even young children will enjoy listening to long chapter books via audiobook. We have an audible account which is great. There are a ton of free books and 99c books as well as a free book credit for a more expensive book each month. My 3 year old will actually sit quietly for over an hour listening to books being read over audible. It’s great!
I would also check out your local library to see if they have an audiobook program.
Find a Book Series They Love
This was the key to getting my kids to become book worms. Once that seed was planted it just grew like crazy. The book series that did it for my kids was The Magic Treehouse series. I swear it may have been these best investment I made in my kids reading future! I wrote a post of book series that kids fall in love with. I asked over 100 homeschooling moms what series their kids loved to read a compiled a pretty epic list of all different genres and reading levels.
Book series are excellent because they can keep that fire going once they start there is another book to keep reading. Sometimes that is all it takes.
Slow Down
Often as parents we are in a hurry to get our kids to the next level and forget that they may have other ideas. Each child is an individual and may need to spend a little extra time on a concept before moving on. Make sure that each skill is fully mastered before tackling the next one. If you move too fast it will eventually catch up to you and back fire.
Stop Comparing
It is so easy to compare children to their siblings or other kids. I know because I have done it countless times. You want to have some kind of gauge of where they are at and if they are behind.
Kids pick up on this and it can be a big demotivator if they feel like they aren’t meeting your expectations of them. It can easily take all the joy out of learning to read for sure.
Instead of comparing meet your child where they are and go from there. They will be more eager to engage if they feel like they aren’t being analysed or critiqued. Celebrate their accomplishments, make a big deal out of it when they master a new concept! I wish I had thrown a big party for my son when he finally grasped the concept of silent letters! It was a brutal time for us. Maybe I was the one who needed the celebratory party!
Some Final Words
Teaching your child to read can be one of the most intense and frustrating tasks you will ever undertake but it is also one of the most rewarding. You are teaching them a life long skill that they will use everyday of their lives.
There is nothing more rewarding than hearing your child finally read that little three word per page reader for the first time without a single mistake. Or when they sound out their first word. The joy and pride that you feel is almost palpable.
So be strong. Take courage. You can do it!
