Top Tips for Teaching Your Child to Read

Reading improves imagination and concentration while providing your child with the essential skills that they need to navigate through life. It’s not until we have a crack at teaching our children for ourselves that we realise how hard it actually is. We have teamed up with a childcare provider in Kew to share a few top tips for teaching your child to read.

Make It Engaging for Them

A top tip for helping your child to read is getting them to choose their own book. This will make sure that they are engaged during story time and want to read. Pop up books are really fun and are a good choice as are character books.

Make Sure That They Know Their Sounds

Phonetics form the foundations for reading and writing and there are many lessons to cover. For example, there are many obscure words that don’t make sense when blended normally without knowing the proper rules. Words such as smile, sea and bike. Going over these until your child is fully confident will help to make sure that they don’t get thrown off when starting to read and develop a positive relationship with reading and writing.

Use Flashcards

One way that you can practice these together is by using flashcards to create your own card sorting game. What a great way to trick your child into doing extra homework!

Be Patient

Patience is the key and with plenty of practice, your child will be reading all by themselves. When blending, allow your child enough time to think and sound words out for themselves before offering hints as this can affect their confidence.

Choose Books That Are In-line with Their Ability

While they may have found an interesting book on their trip to the library, it might not be the best choice when teaching them to read. Books that have more complex vocabulary and sentence structures may throw them off and make reading seem more difficult than it should be at this stage.