Tricks for Teaching Kids to Read
Starting to introduce books early and making reading fun through games are just some of the tricks for teaching kids to read starting at a young age! When you make reading fun, and no longer a chore, you and your child can enjoy the learning process together. Try these tricks to make reading fun and help your child learn to read!
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Read to Them – Reading to your child and pointing out words as you go will help build their site word vocabulary and teach them early building blocks of reading like scanning the page from left to right and using the pictures as clues to the story. Let your young children help build the story while you read it by pointing out “a” and “I” words as you read and building upon that as you go teaching and introducing new words.
Use a Leveled Reading Set – We love our Very First Reading Set by Usborne Books & More as it takes out all the guess work of finding the right level and books for your child. Every book in the set builds upon the one before it. Plus, they’re cute and funny stories that you read together as parent and child. That helps give my son the confidence boost he needs to not quit in the middle of the book, as some parts are for him to read and some are for me. We work our way through the leveled books together.
Photo Credit: Surprise Usborne Books
Play Games with Words – Playing makes learning effortless. We play rhyming games in the car while we drive as we point out things we see around us — “Car! Car rhymes with Tar!” Another easy game we like to play is laying out sight word flash cards and picking one and seeing if we can say the word correctly, then we get to keep the card. We add new words as we’ve mastered others and kids love the challenge.
Let Them Try – An important part of learning to read is letting them try. Don’t be quick to interrupt as they sound out words and try to build sentences. When they have sounded out a word, you can repeat it back to them to reinforce the new word or help guide the correct sound, when needed. A few tricks we use is covering part of the word for compound sounds and using clues from the pictures to help us figure out what the word may be. That may feel like it’s “cheating” but it actually really helps them to learn to recognize those words and associate them with the story.
When you’re really ready to start teaching reading, you’ll want a program to back you up. Rosetta Stone has been a go-to source for learning other languages for 20 years! Now, they’ve expanded to helping your kids learn their own language with the introduction of their Rosetta Stone Kids Reading program. The program is designed by education experts and made for kids age 3-7. It guides children through a self-paced interactive course to teach phonological awareness, phonics, vocabulary, fluency and comprehension.
My four year old loves playing the Rosetta Stone Kids Reading program. It doesn’t feel like schoolwork to him at all. Instead, he just thinks he’s playing games that are reinforcing those early skills such as sorting animal pictures or picking out which part of the story came first, middle, and last.
In just a few of the rhyming game levels, I saw a significant improvement in my son’s ability to rhyme. It just seems to make it “click” for him and now he’s rhyming for us everywhere we go! It is so neat to watch as our children learn and develop new skills and gain the confidence that they can do it!
It can be like pulling teeth to get my son to read sometimes! Reading with him seems to help a lot. Thanks for sharing these great tips!
What great suggestions. Definitely finding books they enjoy and making games out of it makes it fun for them to want to read.
I found flash cards were very helpful when i was teaching my kids to read. There are so many great apps you can get now that make learning fun.
oh wow, those looks awesome!!! I will have to check some of those apps out.
How cool that Rosetta Stone now does things for little kids. I love it!
These are some great tips. My daughters can’t read to well yet, but they know a few words. They love when I read to them, so I’m sure they’re going to love to read books when they can.
Talking to kids is such a huge step to learning! These are great tips! We always play games in the car using the sounds letters make, helps my kids make connections!
These are great ways to get kids to read! Reading is crucial to their development.
It’s great that you work so hard to help your little ones learn to read. Some parents don’t and it’s sad.
My kids love reading. Even the baby is starting to {eat} read the books. My 4 year old had been using the trial of reading eggs and now we are debating on buying it or trying to see if something else works for her too. We will have to look into this. I love the word cards though and I bet she will too. We will have to make some.
My kids absolutely love to read! I love those word cards. I will have to get or make some for my 4 year old. She’s doing alright reading and we had been using the reading eggs website. I was debating on buying or trying something else, so I may have to look into the Rosetta Stone. I’ve heard a lot about it.
We’ve used a lot of these tricks with our kids! I love that Rosetta Stone is now offering a program – we will have to check it out for the twins!
We used similar methods for our kids. I wish we had Rosetta stone though!
That ready program looks and sounds great. We worked with Little Man a lot before he went to kinder but have slacked with the other two
What a great resource for children. Mine always loved books with the beep page, so they could follow along. I loved it because it allowed me to say the beep and have fun with them. Anything that encourages them is a hit in my book.
I was taught at an early age to love books and I passed that on to my own kids. You have some great tips here. Thank you for sharing.
This is such a great program to roll out! My daughter loves to read with the FarFaria app and we ready to her every night! I think reading is incredibly important- I may jut have to try this app for her!
My kids are not big readers like I wish they were. They just have not found that book that reeled them in yet. I was thinking this would be good for them.
Teaching my twins to read was one huge struggle! Yet what made it easier was the games and making it fun – this was key for them!
I think it’s wonderful that Rosetta Stone has a children’s language and reading program now! When I was a child we had CD-ROMS and reading rabbit- I spent hours on the computer, and even learned to type. It certainly did me wonders!
Thanks for the great ideas! I think it’s great that Rosetta stone is helping teach kids to read now. They have such a great system for foreign language, I’m sure they’re great for teaching kids to read, too.
Those are great tips. I am all for anything that helps kids learn.
These are all great tips. In today’s world of tablets and gadgets, if you don’t make reading an amazingly fun experience, the kids aren’t going to be into it.
My kids love reading apps, stuff that is interactive, they also love books that are touch and feel and pop up books, if it is fun, they will read.
These are great tips! I am so excited that my kindergarten son is now reading like a champ, and now I’m ready for our youngest.