Teaching your child how to read is a challenge, but there are different things you can do to help. As a parent, you want the best for your child and teaching them to read is a skill your child will have forever. Here are four techniques you can use to help your child learn to read.
Read Rhyming Books
Did you know rhyming develops literacy? What do your children like reading or talking about? There are many different rhyming books available that cover a variety of topics. Dr. Suess has tons of rhyming books that will help your child with the proper pronunciation of words, as well as developing a sense of word constituents and phonetics. Rhyming books help your child develop language skills. Rhyming books, such as nursery rhymes, teach children how to combine sounds to form words. Nursery rhymes also expose children to uncommon words, extending their vocabulary.
Practice the Sound of Letters
Recognizing letters and practicing the sounds they make helps children put a name with the face so to speak. Choose two to three letters each day and practice the sounds they make. Practicing the sounds of letters can be a fun activity. Point to items that begin with the letter you chose for the day, and practice saying the sound the letter makes and pronounce the name of the item so your child can hear how the letter sounds in the word. You can also point to an item, ask your child the name of it, and ask them to make the sound of the letter it begins with. Using puppets in this scenario is a way you can demonstrate how to sound out letters and words.
Reading to Pets
Everyone experiences stress, including children. Symptoms that are associated with stress include high blood pressure and high blood sugar, headache, insomnia, rapid breathing, stomach ache, and more. Allowing your child to read to pets helps ease many of the symptoms caused by stress, and also helps with literacy. Reading to pets helps boost your child’s confidence because animals like dogs do not pass judgment, they just sit there happy to be participating. Reading to pets increases their motivation and improves their reading aloud skills. When your child reads to pets, their reading fluency, phrasing, and the speed at which they read improve. If you don’t have a calm dog to read to, look into literacy programs that use dogs to help kids gain reading confidence.
Read It Again
Children learn by practice and being repetitive. Read a book more than once and allow your child to read some of the words so they become familiar with how words look and sound. Your child can use the pictures to help them understand what is occurring in the story. You can also take this opportunity to teach your child about the setting and plot of the story to help them become familiar with other new terms.
Reading to your child is one way to boost their brain power. Teaching a child to read can be by far one of the most daunting, yet rewarding things you will do. Your child will thank you.
