While learning to read happens over the course of many, many years, there are plenty of things you can do at home to help your young child learn to read.
“How can I teach my child to read?” is the most common question we hear from parents! It’s important to remember that reading skills are developed over many, many years. Learning to read is more than just sounding out the words on the page—it’s also about learning new things, enjoying a great story and having fun with words.
Research has suggested that a balanced approach to literacy works best for most children. That approach includes helping children explore letters and the sounds they make—the foundation of phonics—but also immersing children in literature and building their oral vocabularies. In fact, introducing young children to letters and sounds as they are engaged in read-aloud experiences, reciting nursery rhymes, playing with magnetic letters or singing the ABC song can lay the foundation they’ll need as they enter kindergarten.
There are plenty of fun things you can do at home to build these early literacy skills: