10 Tips for Teaching Your Young Child to Read

Does your child struggle with reading? Teaching reading is a long process but is very rewarding in the end.

Many parents want their children to learn to read as soon as possible because reading helps to give children an awesome head start in learning almost anything. 

However, children won’t learn to read exactly the same and many struggle with it. If your young child is struggling to read and you want to offer extra help at home, that’s great. This is something you can absolutely do and you don’t have to be teacher to do it.

Infact, if you can read then you can teach your child to read as well.

I taught my 4 children to read and each experience was different. However, there are a few tips that I picked up along the way that I would like to share with you today.

These tips work well for young children ages 2-10. Here they are…

1. Spend 10 minutes a day teaching letter recognition. First, focus only on mastering the uppercase letters. This may take weeks or months, depending on the child.
2. Next, master the lowercase letters. If your child is very young, be careful not to overwork the child. It is better to teach 5 ten-minute lessons over a period of 5 days than to spend one 50-minute chunk of time on a single lesson.
3. After your child has mastered identifying the uppercase and lowercase letters, teach the letter sounds. Take as much time as needed until your child can master the letter sounds.
4. Begin reviewing sight words. I posted common sight words on a wall in the home to make it convenient for teaching.
5. While reviewing sight words, you can begin teaching consonant and alphabet blends such as “st”, “th”, “an”, “en”, “in”, etc.
6. You do not have to master the sight words before moving on to the next step. Continue to teach sight words and different blends.
7. Once your child can blend certain letters together, teach him how to form simple 3 letter words such as “can”, “mat”, “hat”, tin” etc. 
8. Allow him/her to practice reading level 1 – easy read books. This new skill will be exciting and encouraging to your child. He will be motivated to keep going.
9. As much as possible, read to your child. Read books that are atleast one level higher than his/her reading level. Point to the words and slide your finger across the page as you read each word. This teaches your child that we read from left to right. There is something memorable about the act of cuddling next to a parent with a good book. Children will associate the joy of this act with reading and eventually fall in love with reading as well.
10. My final tip is to take your time and work at your child’s pace and avoid comparing your child to anyone else. Although we want our children to learn to read quickly, it’s more important that by the time he’s done learning to read that he also likes it enough to keep doing it. As a parent, you have a huge influence over the memories tied to this reading process. 

If you need more help as you teach reading, check out our selection of  phonics tools  geared especially for young children.

Best of luck and all the best!