Teaching children how to read and especially preschool is very essential and tiring at the same time. The whole process of teaching children to read may come to be wrong. It is very substantial for you to know that when you start to teach your child to read, you should do it gradually and do not try to apply too many different methods at the same time. The normal age at which most of the children start to read is six years old, so there is no need for many parents to worry if their children are younger than six years old and cannot read properly. The most important thing is to know how to start teaching your child and to help you, we present to you the following tips.
– Teach at a young age: You do not need to wait until your child becomes 5 or 6 years old to start teaching him\her to read. You can start to teach your child to read at a young age, few days after birth, to help your child to get used to enjoying reading books and loving them when s\he grows up and do not miss a day without reading.
– Encourage to read: You can encourage and motivate your child to read by making reading one of your habits. When your child notice that you like reading and care about it as a daily habit, then s\he will do the same.
– Read interesting books every day: It is not necessary for you to read a specific type of books or specific number. Pick up the books that your child enjoy and that attract his\her attention. Point to the words while you are reading to help your child to recognize them.
– Allow your child to share: Talking with your child, discussing and asking questions about what you read will help him\her to concentrate more, to speak, to be more fluent, to express his\her thoughts, understand what is read, to pronounce the new words and will make reading more interactive and interesting. You can simply make your child share in reading by answering some pre, while and post-reading questions that you ask such as what can you see?, what will happen?, what is this?, where is the ” boy, cat…..”? and other questions.
– Do not force your child to read: You should make use of the moments in which your child ask about the surrounding things and start to teach him\her what is related to that situation such as a new letter or word. Do not try to force your child to read, because this will decrease his\her love to reading and learning new vocabulary.
– Read loudly: You have to read loudly with a clear voice to help your child to hear the right pronunciation of words during reading.
– Teach letters with their sounds: Do not separate teaching sounds from letters. For teaching letters to your child which is necessary for learning to read, you can simply hang them in the child’s room, do activities, use flashcards or you can make the letters on your own and attach them to objects that initiate with the letter that you want to teach.
– Begin with teaching lowercase letters: Do not start teaching letters with uppercase ones such as ” R” and instead of that begin with lowercase letters “r” that are more used in writing and will help your child to recognize letters while reading.
– Read different types of children’s books: You should not concentrate on a specific type of books when you read to your child especially at the age of 5. Changing the types of books will help your child to explore more about the surrounding objects and realities in our world. You can choose from many types of children’s books such as alphabet books, picture books, song books, fantasy and real stories.
– Teach through playing games: It is an interactive way for teaching words that facilitates reading. You can use the word family game which refers to the words that have the same spelling but differ in the first letter such as ” fat, rat, cat, mat, hat” they end with the same letters “at” but differ in the first one.
– Teach phonically irregular words: It is very necessary for your child to learn the irregular common words that do not follow the phonic rules and are pronounced in a different way. These words should be taught as sight words which means to see and pronounce them and should be memorized.
– Do not neglect the cover and pictures: Attracting your child’s attention to the cover will help in expecting what is going to happen inside the book and the pictures will make your child enjoy reading.
– Choose the suitable time: It is very essential when you decide to read to your child, to choose the right and the most suitable time when the child is ready.
– Do not make it take a long time: Do not read for a long time in order to avoid getting your child bored. You can read for about 10-15 minutes.
– Teaching reading and writing together: It will be great to teach writing with reading because this will force your child through using more than one sense and repeating words to increase reading skills and improve them quickly.