10 Basic Steps in Teaching Kids How to Read on their own

A child learning how to read can be a little nerve-wracking and, understandably so. Unlike naturally developing motor skills by a certain age, learning to read is something you have to help them properly develop. Kids typically begin their reading journey between the ages 4 to 6 years old. This is a great time to implement different techniques to move along with their skills. Here are a few good ways to go about developing those skills:

Kids learn through active learning so reading to them out loud can help them to quickly catch on. Reading aloud creates stimulation and can help them become familiar with the act of reading altogether. Sitting with them each day or night and reading to them create developmental responses, while they learn through letters, numbers and pictures.

Choosing vibrant books with colorful illustrations also helps keep their attention and visually enjoy the story. As they grow you can read books more appropriate to their age range, which further promote and expands their learning abilities.

It’s important to keep in mind that sometimes a child may have a hard time remaining engaged and focused. This, however, is nothing of alarm as this is normal for most kids. Because of this, it’s ideal to practice reading or learning while you’re away from home.

Utilizing their environment while in different settings can help develop several skills outside of reading. This will also teach them to be aware of their surroundings while learning about the world around them. Doing so can also teach them to memorize locations as practicing spelling names of places like cafes and stores will strengthen memories of locations.

What kid doesn’t enjoy arts and crafts? Incorporating craft artistic activities along with spelling and reading is highly beneficial for kids. It’s very engaging which allows stimulative and visual learning and fosters creative thinking. This allows them to pick up on things much faster and is simply lots of fun.

You can use different toys and materials such as play dough, magnetic letters, toy letter blocks and more. Create fun games where they build four or five letter words with blocks, or they can create and shape words out of the colorful play dough. It really is a great way to merge fun, playtime, and learning while your child builds their reading skills.

Reading stories to kids in an animated way brings the stories to life in an exciting way. When they see a life-like physical and verbal description of characters they are able to create an association between the characters and their behaviors. This allows them a better understanding of emotions and how they work through expression.

It also helps them develop a deeper understanding of words and their meanings, and further builds familiarity which leads to stronger associations, better spellings and pronunciations.

Kids are watching us even when we aren’t aware of it. Often, they mimic their parent's behaviors as they think it’s what they are supposed to do. So, if you’re picking up a book each day and reading they will begin to do the same, resulting in the development of a positive habit. This is another great way to help with teaching your child to read as it sheds light on the action while sparking interest in your little one.   

Phonics is understanding the relationship between sounds, letters, words and how to use all three. This learning approach simply provides ways to help your child learn how to correlate words and letters while using them in a sentence. 

This game is a pretty simple one, but it’s also effective in teaching your child sounds of letters. The game consists of a group of pictures of various animals and objects. With two players you each must take a marker (both must be a different color) and color in the picture after naming it and saying the first letter. Whoever reaches four in a row first, wins.

With a dry erase board, draw a picture of something simple and comprised of various objects like a snowman for example. Then ask your child to erase an object on the picture that starts with a given letter. For example, a snowman has a carrot nose so, ask them to erase something that starts with the letter “c”. Continue with these questions until they have identified the letter of each object on the drawing.

Although this game is quick and fairly easy, playing it several times will really aid in your child picking up on phonics. For this, simply write any three letters down on a sheet of paper. Next, you want to ask your child to say each letter out loud and sound it out. Then, ask which is the last letter they hear in a word that corresponds with one of the three letters. For example, if you choose the letters t,r,n ask which the last letter do you hear in the word 'eat'?

This type of game is really fun as you can play while you and your child are in the car. Look around and think of words that are only two or three lettered, and ask your child to spell them for you. For example sky, car, up, bug etc. This will help them develop more familiarity with their surroundings and give them something to look forward to during car rides.

When reading to your child, ensure to practice enunciation. You can have them repeat certain words after you but make sure they make the correct pronunciation of each word. This helps them strengthen their correlation between letters, words and the way they sound. 

Learning to read is something that requires a child to stay happily engaged in order to learn. Incorporating different activities can help them remain attentive while promoting creativity and visual learning. These activities are not only enjoyable for your little one but will also aid in fostering creativity reading abilities, and literacy.

Rhymes, repetitions and rhythms are beneficial as they aid in the development of literacy skills. Repeating and rhyming words are also a great foundation for brain development of language and sounds. You can go about teaching your child to rhyme through books that contain repeated rhyming phrases, such as Dr Seuss stories or, the classic The Little Engine That Could. 

 Both of these are great examples of stories with repetitive rhymes that are both engaging and allow children to explore sounds and phrases. Also activities that can help your child think of words that rhyme on their own, are ideal.

Try your hand at allowing your child to read to you instead of you to them. This does quite a few wonderful things for their development. Allowing them to read to you helps open up their imagination even more, as they apply how to bring characters and sounds to life. As they read ask them questions about what will happen next or to explain a part of the story to you. This challenges them to think critically and regurgitate information they have just learned.

As previously mentioned it’s important you make reading as exciting as possible for your child. This helps them become enthusiastic to create a habit of doing so. One way you can achieve this is to create a reading corner. Pick a comfy corner in your home and make it nice and cozy.

You can place pillows and a blanket for comfort while placing their favorite books to read. You can join them and ask them to tell you about the story they are reading. This is great for sharpening their skills as well as spending quality time with your little one.

This is a great exercise and it’s guaranteed to provide fun and encouragement for your child. Using construction paper and markers, ask your child to put an event in story form. This can be as simple as them writing about their last trip to their grandparent’s house, or how much fun they had at their friends birthday party. This will encourage stronger spelling, as well as reading and creative skills.

It’s safe to say more often than not, kids aren’t excited about completing their chores. However, they can be if you implement learning time into them. For example, if you ask them to wash their clothes you can grab the bottle of detergent and encourage them to read the instructions, step by step. 

Then you can explain to them what each step means and later on, revisit the instructions and encourage them to tell you in the order, what they were. This can boost memory as well as critical thinking, and also strengthen their reading skills.

This approach can aid children in learning to read through their senses. This includes any exercises or activities that involve drawing, listening, seeing, writing etc.

When we learn words, we learn them broken down into sounds or pairs of letters. With the linguistic approach, a child would learn by whole words instead. This means they are taught in spelling patterns and word families and not broken down into various parts.

This method exercises and strengthens comprehension through skimming and focusing on words. It teaches the reader to learn how to fill in missing words in a text, by strengthening the impulse or skill of the missing element. For every fifth or eighth word picked randomly, the student has to fill in the missing word in the sentence. This strengthens understanding of the English language as well as reading skills.

Teaching a child to read is a very special time in their lives and yours. Having the ability to help them develop a meaningful and lifelong skill such as reading, requires an endless amount of patience and time. Despite, continue to encourage them and by implementing activities discussed in this article, your child will be well on their way to becoming the amazing reader they were made to be.