If you have decided you want to teach your child to read, a huge initial step will be to teach them the alphabet. Teaching them their letters is really easy and fun! You don’t need to hire anyone just to put all those letters into your children’s heads! You can do it yourself! To make this task easier, there are strategies that you need to know.

Teach the sounds of the letters together with their names. In reading, it is the sounds that count. For example, if your daughter’s name is Carla write her name on a piece of paper and point to letter C and say “the name of this letter is (see)” then you can do it on the following letter until she remembers the letters of her name and how they sound.

Write the letters carefully and quite large in a red color on white card. It is a good idea to limit the initial reading vocabulary. Teach your child simple and common words at first, then progress to the names of people your child sees regularly, and familiar objects like their toys or furniture, and onwards from there. They will learn to read more complicated words as they learn more reading rules. Don’t be strict with how your child pronounces the sounds. There may be reasons why some children have a hard time saying words in an academically correct way, like regional accents or weak auditory skills. Remember that learning sounds is only an initial step in elementary reading.

Remember to teach the lower case letters first. This is a common mistake for some moms and even teachers in teaching children the letters. Putting the upper and lower case letters together often causes confusion in children. Do them one at a time. Teach the lower case first then the upper case, or vice versa, but most educational professionals advise that you teach your children the lower case letters first, since capital letters account for only five percent of all letters in written English. So pay more attention to the lower case letters for they are far more important in developing reading skills. Don’t worry about the grammar. Don’t complicate things or confuse them with the consonants, vowels, long and short sounds and a lot more. Even without these rules, they will learn to read. Keep in mind that you are teaching them the first step in reading. They can learn the reading rules later or in school. For now concentrate on teaching the letters with constant practice. Read the rest of this entry »