Reading is a crucial part of education and daily life. It’s one of the first things that your child will learn at school, starting with their phonetics. Once they’re able to read confidently, they can take things into their own hands. Become more independent and take charge of their learning.
Help with Phonetics
Children begin work on phonetics at the age of 4 years old. That said, there’s nothing stopping you from exploring them sooner. They are the building blocks for reading and can help them to get a head start as they will already be familiar. As with all young children, it can be difficult to get their attention. If you’re struggling for their attention, card games and phonetics songs may be able to help as they are fun and interactive.
Avoid Complicating Things
When teaching your child to read there’s one thing to mind. You should be wary of overloading or confusing them. At this stage, where they are trying to blend and read for themselves, keep concepts simple. Avoid using capitals and referring to the name of letters. It creates more for them to get their head around and can make the process much harder than it should be.
Read to Them
Even if your child can’t read yet, it’s important to explore books together. You can read to them and that will help them with what is known as spoken vocabulary. They’ll learn new words and be able to identify them with the words that they can see on the page as they follow along.
Age-Appropriate Books
The same goes for the books that you read together. Books that you can find in the bookstore and library are usually labelled, helping you to clearly identify which best suits your child’s reading ability.
If you have any tips on teaching your child to read we’d love to hear them. We hope that you liked this post. For more like this, take a look at our other blog posts.
*Collaborative post