Teaching Your Child To Read FAQ

Teaching your own child to read can feel like a gargantuan task.

We’ve learned a lot over the years… often the hard way!

In this article, we’ll answer some of your most commonly asked questions and share our favorite strategies for tailoring instruction to your own unique child.

Where do I start?

Start by reading to your children, even in infancy.

Find things they enjoy reading. Make it a part of your family culture. Make it fun!

When you’re ready to begin teaching your child to read, we recommend starting with phonics.

What is phonics?

A phoneme is a unit of sound. More specifically, it’s the smallest phonetic unit capable of conveying a distinction in meaning, such as the c in cat and the h in hat.

Phonics is a teaching method that focuses on phonemes.

English spelling doesn’t always make sense. By teaching children phonics BEFORE teaching them letter names, you can help them associate each letter (or combination of letters) with the sound(s) that it makes.

Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons is a fantastic book to start with. It breaks the process down into bite-sized pieces, and children are reading by the 50th lesson. Use it as a starting off point, and make it your own!

There are some wonderful apps out there too!

• Phonogram Sounds (look for the blue bumblebee) is a free app that lets your child press letters or “teams” of letters to hear the sounds they make.

• Endless Reader is a fantastic drag-and-drop puzzle app that repeats the sounds made by each letter as you pull them into their place in the word. It also reads the words as you drop them into sentences, and then reads the sentence aloud and rewards you with a cute little animation acting out the sentence.

For active, physical children, check out Zoo-phonics! They associate each letter with an animal and a body movement, connecting them with the letters' sounds. Zoo-phonics offers beautiful cards and games to make phonics fun.

What about sight words?

We do include some sight words and emphasize common words like of, said, and was.

Acknowledge WHY they’re sight words! Validate your child’s confusion. “Yeah, English is crazy! There are always exceptions.”

You can also use confusing words as an opportunity to reinforce normal sound rules. “What?! The letter e isn’t supposed to make an uh sound! English is so silly sometimes!” like the word THE.

What are some good books for early readers?

There are so many wonderful book sets available. Google Easy Reader book sets and pick the one that brings the most interest to your child. It's best if they choose it too and treat it as exciting as a new Christmas Present. Ivy and Bean is another favorite for girls starting chapter books. And we love the classic Mr. Men and Little Miss books for their vocabulary and socioemotional learning.

You can use the Accelerated Reader website assessment to determine your child’s reading level and find books that are a great fit for them. The AR BookFinder will provide a list of books in their zone of proximal development -- books that are appropriately challenging, neither too easy nor too frustrating.

Remember, this is a TOOL to help you and your children -- not a standard to adhere to or stress over.

We also like to use the Rule of Five as a guideline.

If your child is stuck on five words on one page, the book may be too difficult to read by themselves. Read it with them! Let them read the most important parts, the exciting point of the sentence.

And if they aren’t encountering new words (five in a short book or five in a chapter), bump it up! Help them find them something that’s a little more challenging.

What books do you recommend for ME the parent-teacher?

Consider investing in The Roadmap to Literacy. It’s a Waldorf language arts book intended for children ages seven and up. It has chapters on speech, grammar, vocabulary, and more. This wonderful book contains plenty of bookwork ideas and tips to help struggling students.

For helping older children learn to write correctly, we recommend The Wise Guide for Spelling. We call it SWR. There are Facebook support groups and training available by trained SWR experts.

Any book or curriculum that you buy to support your homeschooling should be used as a guide, not an isolated commitment. These books provide wonderful support, but don’t let them constrain you.

YOU are the expert on your child. And they are the experts on themselves. Trust your instincts.

Is it okay if we read this book she has memorized?

YES!

Small children love to read the same books over and over again. It reinforces what they’re learning and helps them associate positive emotions with reading. Embrace it!

Is my child behind?

One of the biggest pressures of being a parent educator is wondering, “What level should my child be at?”

Your child is unique.

Don’t compare your family and your education journey to anyone else.

If you start to feel frustrated, take a break! Don’t project your frustrations. Don’t think about how slow it’s going (simply learning vowel sounds can take a year, especially if you teach them to write them as well!).

Think of how far they’ve come. Focus on their effort. Praise the effort!

I just told our client this week to remember the rule of 10, for every ONE criticism, it takes TEN positive comments to bring emotional encouragement.

Surrender to the beauty of working one on one. Your child is so lucky to get your focused attention. In our practice, we see so much growth in small and one on one settings.

Go with the rhythm of the moment, the rhythm of your child.

Work with their attention span. If they have the patience to try again and again, sit with that. If they’re feeling eager or frustrated, help them along.

Allow your child to steer their education. Help them pursue what they’re interested in. If you don’t know where to begin creating a custom curriculum, we would love to help.

How can I help my children improve their reading comprehension?

We’re big fans of active reading strategies.

Underline, color, doodle!

Encourage your children to engage with their books. Help them to design their own special symbols for passages they want to return to. Highlight and circle new words and beautiful descriptions.

Do everything you can to help your children “make a movie” in their heads. Read dynamically, with voices and emphasis. Use the internet to find photos to help them picture new vocabulary words, like forest canopy or cathedral.

You can also encourage them to summarize what they just read.

Keep it casual: “What happened in the last part, I wasn’t there when you read it? Catch me up!”

If they’re struggling with comprehension, stop more often. Every half page, every paragraph. It’s normal for kids to get distracted!

If they don’t want to write or tell, encourage them to draw a picture - and then tell you what’s going on in their picture! Take dictation, and then they can use it as copy work. This helps with spelling too.

And if you’ve tried all this and you’re still struggling?

We’re always here to help.