It is a well acknowledged fact that children who develop reading skills before they are being introduced to formal school program, do well in several aspects and they also have better understanding on various things that are being taught to them in the school. Here is a simple guide to help parents find answer to questions regarding teaching children to read.
Consider the age to begin

Before you start pondering on how to teach a toddler to read, you need to consider the age of the child first. If you attempt to make a baby of few months learn to read, you would certainly fail as the mental development of the child has not reached a stage where it can read or comprehend. The best time to start your quest of helping the child to learn to read is when he starts speaking and communicating, which happens at around 2 years of age for most children.
Read stories aloud

Start by reading story books aloud to the child. Children have a natural habit of trying to learn whatever they see happening around them. As you get into the practice of reading out stories aloud to the child, he would develop the habit of listening and comprehending, and at the same time the urge for reading all by himself would also start in the child’s mind. This urge has to be created, as that is the key behind the success of teaching children to read.

Choose the storybooks wisely as per the age of the child. You can start with lullabies or board books with real pictures and as the child crosses the 2 years mark, you can gradually shift to rhyming books, song books and short story books. As the child approaches the 5 years age, you may think of switching to alphabet books, song books of higher level, picture books and rhyming books. You need to start the reading yourself, and gradually you would see your child showing interest in doing some self reading.
Introduce letters and phonics reading

Once the child is somewhat familiar with the different words that he has been hearing from you while you read out stories to him, plan to start breaking those words to individual letters. Start with basic alphabets and letters and while you may choose to be creative here, but the conventional alphabet song is not a bad idea to introduce the child to reading. Once the child learns to read the different letters and then the words, you can focus on phonics reading for kids, without which the reading would not be as per the rules of the English language.

You need to understand that reading requires a certain level of mental development and if your child is not developed as he or she is underage, there is no point pushing the child on that. No matter how hard you try, ideal reading skills gets developed in a child by the age of 4 years. Anything before that is not reading, but simply recognizing shapes and symbols which will gradually fuse in the mind to form the reading capability of the little one.

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