Teaching Kids to Read

Thanks to those of you who said they would like to read what I have to say about teaching kids to read. It’s one of my favorite subjects. I do not think I have all of the answers, nor do I think I’m an expert. I do think I have some great ideas though and I love sharing them. I think Stacy (Boquinha) hit the nail on the head when she said, “when our kids learn to read, it is as exciting as first words and first steps!”

You hear from everyone that you should be reading to your kids from the time they are babies. I absolutely believe this. Babies not only learn to love books, they also learn what words mean and what books are. I believe babies are so much more capable of learning than most people think. I love watching those videos of babies actually reading words. It’s incredible! I never even thought to try that. I don’t think teaching babies to read words is important, but it may be fun to do. I do think it’s important to recognize that babies can and should be learning all the time. This applies to lots of things not just reading.

The best advice I ever got was to let my kids turn the pages at their own pace. Help them learn how to turn the pages early on. Once they learn, don’t worry if they skip pages or go back. Just read any page they go to for as long as they let you. You don’t even have to read the words to make the book fun. You could take the baby’s finger and help them point to the things as you tell them what they are. Pretty soon they will be able to do it on their own. This helps babies learn to love books. It feels really unnatural not to read a book from cover to cover, but I think it’s really important to make reading fun. If reading from cover to cover isn’t fun for a baby, don’t do it that way.

I have no idea when most kids let their parents start reading books to them from cover to cover, but I remember wondering if it would ever happen for us. Just when I was about to abandon hope, it happened! They sat through one book, then another, then another… For my kids, I think the age was closer to three or four before they consistently started sitting quiet for all of the books. If you have a couple kids I think it’s great for the older one to practice listening while their younger siblings run around, disrupt and only pay half attention. This is a skill they will need once school starts and in all stages of life.

Parents should read with as much expression as they can. This is so important! Parents should try to make up voices for the different characters and change the level of sound for different parts of the book. For example, if a character is supposed to be really quiet, the parent should read really quiet. If a character is excited, a parent should read louder. It’s amazing how a wiggly toddler will suddenly start to pay attention when a parent changes noise levels. Again, don’t worry if they only pay attention to part of the book.

When reading with young kids, you should help them follow the words with their finger. This teaches them that the words you say associate with the letters on the page. They also learn the direction of reading (that we read from left to right, top to bottom).

Help your kids feel confident by letting them finish the sentences for you. There are probably some favorite books your kids read over and over. As they start to memorize the words it’s exciting for them to be able to “read” parts of the book. In reality, they aren’t really reading, they are just memorizing, but it still exciting for them. We all tend to enjoy the things we are good at so help your kids feel like they are really good at reading. My mom told me that she thinks the best thing she did for my siblings and me is to help us feel confident. Not just in reading but in all areas. I think she was right (and could write a ton on that subject too).

The first words my kids learned to read were stop and exit because you see those words everywhere and they are always written in the same shape and color. Again, it’s a confidence builder to be able to recognize those words.

Picture books with a word for each picture is a good thing for kids too. Although they are usually looking at the picture to guess the word, it still encourages confidence. I always let my kids read the word first, then I would congratulate them on reading the word right and read it again sounding out each letter so they could see how the letters made up the word.

My favorite way to instill confidence in my kids was when they started to learn their letters and sounds. In short books, with few words, I would find the only word that started with a certain letter then say, “find the word ________”. I would then repeat the word over and say the first sound lots of times. For example, for the word silly I would say, “Find the word silly. S-S-S-Silly”. My kids thought they were so smart and felt confident because they could easily find those words. It was fun!

My oldest was really motivated by computer games. I spent quite a bit of time playing cute Sesame Street educational computer games with him when he was only one. Eventually he got his own computer on the floor next to my desk. I wouldn’t let him play unless he read the words by himself. I got tired of reading everything for him, so at two I made him read words like stop, start, play, next, and begin. Eventually he learned other words too because he was motivated to play his games and I wouldn’t let him play unless he could do it on his own. To clarify, I may let my kids play more games or watch more TV than some, but I like to follow up with most everything they play and watch. I like to ask them questions and challenge them as they are playing or watching so that I know they are learning too. I’m not always consistent, but at least I make a good effort. I love PBS shows and the PBS website. Another AMAZING website is http://www.starfall.com/. MAKE SURE YOU TRY THAT SITE if you have a child between one and six. Older kids will like this site too especially if they aren’t reading really well. It is so much fun! Make sure your kids click on all of the pictures. It’s such an incredible resource for teaching kids letters and how to read.

Rhyming is another great way to teach toddlers important skills for reading. We used to rhyme in the car all the time to make a drive more fun. Eventually rhyming skills will give your kids confidence as they start spelling and reading. Each kid is different, but at 4 years old my kids would spell a certain word such as cat and I would say, “Wow! If you can spell cat, you can spell hat”. When they spelled hat, I would change to another rhyming word. It was really exciting for them to find out they could not only spell one word, but lots of words! This was my best way to help my kids learn to sound out words. Both of my kids usually got frustrated looking at books and trying to sound words out for more than a couple minutes. My goal was to always make learning fun for the kids. So if they got frustrated I would usually stop immediately. If I kept things fun, the kids learned faster.

Once my kids started to read I tried to help them read with expression. Usually they would read a sentence in a mono-tone voice, then I would re-read it with expression or ask them to re-read it with expression. It was really fun for my kids to learn what exclamation points and question marks meant early in their reading development. They loved yelling when a sentence had an exclamation mark. And they loved changing their voice when a question mark came up. It cracked me up as they were learning about question marks. When a question mark came up in a sentence, they read most of the sentence mono-tone then add a slightly higher tone for the last word. Ha ha. My youngest is still learning, but my oldest is really good at reading with expression. It’s really fun to listen to him read, it is never boring.

Although it really took years for my kids to learn to read it always felt like they learned overnight. It’s so much fun when something clicks and they finally get it! Both my kids could read and spell words pretty early but I didn’t view them as actually reading until they were about five and could read books. My youngest started reading a bit later than her older brother because I didn’t work with her quite as much (poor girl). I know she could have done what her brother did if I had worked with her more. She was only a couple months behind him though and is now so excited to read she is learning at lightning speed. The other day in church she was even reading the words to the hymn and singing a lot of the words right. It was so cute!

Another super cute thing my daughter does is watch PBS shows like Word World, Super Why and Word Girl with a paper and pencil. She writes down all of the words she sees in the show then has me quiz her on them later. I love it! She likes to bring me her papers and put stars by the correctly spelled words just like her brother’s second grade teacher does at the top of his spelling tests. I personally don’t really care if she spells words right though. I noticed that the teachers in school don’t really focus on correct spelling until about second grade. I was surprised by that first, but then I realized that they are trying to encourage kids to sound out words and there are a lot of English words that don’t sound the way they are spelled. I also think this gives the kids confidence to continue to try to spell. Again, we all like to do things we are good at and seem to stay away from things we don’t do well.

My brother-in-law Bruce said that his dad used to read chapter books without pictures to his kids at early ages. I have thought about this a lot and it seems to me that this must be a really important aspect of learning to read as well. I read somewhere that it lets you introduce a higher level of reading to your kids. I assume it trains your brain in a different way and helps you to learn to focus and comprehend things differently.

I certainly don’t have all of the answers, but I do believe a parent’s involvement is crucial. We should not be depending on the schools to teach everything to our kids. I do NOT mean that as a jab to public schools though. I just think parents and teachers should be working together. I am personally really happy with the public school my kids go to. I’m very impressed with the teachers and staff there. I spend as much time volunteering at my kid’s school as I can because I want to see what they are doing and being taught. So far, we have been blessed with incredible teachers and I have learned a lot about teaching my kids from them. I think my kids have the best of both worlds. They learn about so many different things at school that I would never even think of teaching them, and then when they get home I can reinforce the things they learn at school and teach them other fun things as we work on things at home or go out to explore and play.

Who else has a fun idea to share? I would love to hear anything you can add!