How to Teach a Child to Read at Home- 8 Simple and Effective Steps

Effective ways to help your child to read at home with 8 simple steps

Help your child to be a fluent reader by simply following these 8 easy steps

Well, early education can be quite a challenge for parents. These days we tend to send our kids to childcare from a very early age of one and a half year. Busy parents manage their work-life balance and end up sending their children to daycare centers.

After kids attain a certain age, let's say 3 years, the parents start worrying about introducing books to their lives and want their kids to be a great reader who has an inborn love and attachment with the books.

But wait, it may look simple to us but for kids, it's extremely difficult. To make it easier there are systematic steps which are used throughout the world to inculcate reading habit in children and everything is done step by step, one after the other.

Let's get to know how we should proceed to see amazing results that will last a lifetime for our kids.

1. Introduction to Books- No age is too early to introduce your child with books. It is good to start with picture books when they are as young as 6 months old. This will really help them to relate with even when they grow up. Keeping a book or two in their toy box will give kids the freedoms to explore colorful cardboard picture books.

2. Learning Alphabets- Mostly kids learn English alphabets by their name and later stars relating it with its picture and then they start relating it with a word such as "A for Apple." We are in a constant dilemma that our children have started relating to the letter sounds but as of now, it is another long journey for the child as well as for the mother.

3. Introduction of Letter Sound- After your child is well conversant with the English alphabets, they must be introduced with the letter sounds. This will actually help them to read. Now they will relate a letter with its sound and not just with the picture. It is important for the educator to know the letter sound properly first. Sometimes it happens that there is confusion between relative letter sound like "A" and "E". You can listen to a few YouTube video and also there are online programs that can help you and your child learn correct letter sound. To make the process faster and simpler, you may introduce flash cards that will have a great impact on the progress of your child.

4. Mixing of Letters- Assuming that your child is well conversant with letter-sound now it is time to introduce mixing of the letter. There is a rule that is followed for mixing letters together to form a sound. The five vowels of the English alphabet are mixed with components to create distinctive letter sound. Take a look at the below chart and create one for your kid and put it on a wall or somewhere which catches your kids attention easily.

A	E	I	O	U
Ba	Be	Bi	Bo	Bu
Da	De	Di	Do	Du
Fa	Fe	Fi	Fo	Fu
Ga	Ge	Gi	Go	Gu
Ha	He	Hi	Ho	Hu
Ja	Je	Ji	Jo	ju
Ka	Ke	Ki	Ko	Ku
La	Le	Li	Lo	lu
Ma	Me	Mi	Mo	Mu
Na	Ne	Ni	No	Nu
qua	Que	Qui	Quo	qu
Ra	Re	Ri	Ro	Ru
Sa	Se	Si	So	Su
Ta	Te	Ti	To	Tu
Va	Ve	Vi	Vo	Vu
Wa	We	Wi	Wo	Wu
Ya	Ye	Yi	Yo	Yu
Za	Ze	Zi	Zo	zu

                           Mixing of Vowels with most of the consonants to make a basic phonetic sound

5. Creating Short Meaningful Words- At this juncture when your kid has understood the rhythm of letter mixing sound, it is time for you to introduce small three to four letter words and encourage them to read. You can also find simple phonics books in book stores which can help your child to read all by herself. I recently got my hands on a book which has a series from 1 to 6 which goes easy to hard as it introduces phonics.

The name of the book is My Phonics Readers by Si Yiah Ling (MSC USA). You can also go to their online book store and take a look at the variety of books available and order a few for your child.
http://www.pelangibooks.com/product-category/preschool/nurser-learning-age3-4/englsih-3/

6. Learning of sight words- There is a list of 220 pre-primer, primer, and 99 nouns that are introduced at a slow pace during the early reading days which will give confidence to your child while reading. These sight words make the most of the introductory sentences that your kid will encounter in her arriving phase. This will give them the confidence to read and the ability to analyze letters to form a word and this sentence.
https://mrsperkins.com/files/dolch-words-all-printable.pdf

7. Introduction to the English language- This is being published by 'The National Right to Read Foundation' for every English learner from around the world. This will make the work easy for you and this is widely followed by every early education givers. I will also add a link for the same for easy download and free access.
http://www.nrrf.org/old/PhonicsPrimer.pdf

8. The journey begins- We might think that our battle is over, but from here the journey begins. The lifelong cycle of reading and learning take a flight from now on. The whole new world of the reading experience welcomes your child to make new memories every time. Take note of your child's progress and make sure to introduce new and exciting books to their library constantly to keep up their enthusiasm.


Hope you enjoy reading. Please leave your comments for any further query. If you have any specific query regarding your child's education kindly comment below and I promise to write for you in details.