Learning how to read is an important milestone in a child’s life. It can be difficult and overwhelming for a child to master this life skill. Try some of these tips to make learning to read easier and exciting for your child.
Letter sounds. The first lesson you should cover is letter sounds. You can make letter sounds fun through song. You can make up your own song such, ah ah ah ah apple, ba ba ba ba bananas, etc. You can also find compact discs or cassette tapes at your local library that cover letter sounds. There are also many educational toys that you can use to help teach your children the different letter sounds.
Start out small. Start your child out with some common words. Words like it, and, but, all, and the appear frequently, making them great words to learn in the beginning. These words are short, which means they are easier for a child to sound out. These words also appear in other words. Once a child learns these words it can help them to sound out other words. For example, the word at appears in words such as cat, bat, and flat. Learning these words can make tackling larger words easier on your child.
Learn common sounds. There are many common sounds that can make learning to read easier for your child. Some common sounds are ch, sh, st, ay, er, and ing. These common sounds often appear paired with common words. For example: ch and at make the word chat. Some of these common words can also be combined to form words such as st and ay make the word stay.
Different spellings can make the same sound. Letter combinations such as are and air can make the same sound. Teach these words together when learning the sounds of common letter groups. You can combine the two options, are and air, together on a flash card when teaching your child combined letter sounds. This way if your child has problems sounding out the word chair, because they’ve forgotten how to sound out air, you can help them remember by reminding them that it sounds just like the combined letters are.
Here are a few more examples of combined letters that sound the same:
ere ear
awl all
or oar
ane ain
You can help your child learn these similar sounds through rhyme. Rhyme words together that contain one example each. One example would be: fair and share. Rhyming words can be fun for kids and help them to remember the different spellings for similar sounds.
Spell words by sounding them out. One exercise you and your child can try is spelling words out by sounding them out. For the word brown you can sound out the word by letter and/or combined letter sounds to spell it out. For example you can sound it out as bah, rrr, oww, nnn or brrr, owww, nnn. Start out easy with words that comprise mostly of common words or sounds. Take these words, chair, staying, bear, and other similar words. Don’t worry if they spell the word wrong many combined letters have similar sounds, so if your child might spell chair as chare. You will want to correct them but should praise them as well. The child is showing you that they remember the sound(s) that combined letters make.
You can make learning to read fun by making up games to help your child learn. Flash cards have long been used when it comes to teaching many things, but they can be boring. You can make up cards to play your own version of go fish. Write combined letter sounds on one side of each card. Deal out cards and place remaining cards in the middle. Your child can ask if you have an awl which can be paired up with another awl or all. You can also make up cards with combined letter sounds and have your child put them together to form words. Go on a scavenger hunt in your home or head outdoors, looking for objects whose names have a certain combined letter sound in them. You can use the combined letter sound of air and help your child go around the room and finding things with that sound in their names, such as chair, hair, air, bear, etc.
Come up with your own poetry. Rhyme words with common letter sounds to form poetry. You can come up with the first line, something like I took a walk today with my bear, and have your child come up with the next line that has an ending word that rhymes with the word bear. You can write your poetry down in a notebook so that you and your child can read them together. Be silly when making up poetry. By making silly poems your child may be more interested.
When teaching your child how to read remember to keep the lessons short. You don’t want to overwhelm your child with too much information at once or teaching them the same things over and over for a long period of time. You can make a sticker chart to serve as a visual aid of your child’s progress in learning to read. Learning to read should be enjoyable for your child. Avoid frustrations by implementing some of these ideas, allowing your child to focus instead on the joys of reading.
