Teaching my children to read

I am fortunate to have two brilliant children, both of whom have learned to read at the age of five. I am not an expert in early childhood literacy, but I believe that our daily practices have everything to do with our children's propensity to read.

Children need to crawl before they can walk and this holds true for reading. The simple exercise of recognizing upper and lower case letters is a big accomplishment and will lay the groundwork for literacy. Sing the ABCs with your kids. When my girls were between the ages of three and four I started a daily checklist. I listed all the letters in a notebook. Everyday I would ask my girls to identify the letters. This was done in many ways such as asking them to type the letter on a computer keyboard and having the letter appear in a large colorful font in a word editing program. I also used flash cards or used some of their toys which had the alphabet on them. For every letter they identified I placed a check mark next to the letter. A couple of times doing this exercise quickly pointed to the letters they had trouble identifying and we spent extra time on those letter.

The use of a Computer and encouraging children to use the computer is the largest motivation next to books. It amazes me that a large number of parents who will not allow their young children to be online as if they will start their own Facebook or Myspace pages. Set your kids up with their own Limited User Accounts the benefits of this in protecting your pc are beyond the scope of this post to list. Place icons on the desktop so they can access the games that you want them to play.

Let them have a password! The novelty in having a password to get onto the computer and to play game such as Webkinz, is a powerful learning tool. My youngest daughter was four and asked me "why can't I have my own password to sign into the computer". This is a great opportunity to teach them a word. I try to give them the encouragement that they can play on the computer if they can sign themselves in. A simple password such as ball, to get onto the computer, a simple user name and password to sign into an online game such as Webkinz and they are familiar with two or three words and a dozen letters.

Our ability to read is directly related to the ability to phonetically sound out letters. I find our daily practice in this occurs at the dinner table. We have fun discussions such as "what letter does the word cat or kick start with"? Reading the labels on condiment bottles such as Ketchup or Salad Dressing shows that the importance of reading goes beyond reading books and that words and letters are all around us.

Reading with Dick and Jane. I view this as the most powerful tool in my literacy bookcase. Similar to a general holding back his troops before charging into battle, once your children can confidently recognize upper and lowercase letters and simple words introduce them to these books. I found that the simple structure of these books gives children the confidence and fluency to begin reading. Once they gain this confidence and momentum I try to encourage daily reading with wild enthusiasm.

Up until the fourth grade, children learn to read. After that point, children read to learn.
Giving your children a jump start in reading is a gift they will carry with them for the rest of their life.