Helping Your Toddler Learn to Read

When you start to notice your child trying to say words like momma and dadda I think this is the perfect time to start teaching them how to read. It is very important to start them as early as they seem interested.

Our son's first word was momma followed by uh-oh then dadda etc. My spouse and I started to research at that point on ways to teach your child to read. There are many articles and how tos out there on teach your child to read. There are videos and dvds and books. These are all good. I want to share some tips that we are using that really seem to work well.

We started to read to our son as much as possible, at night during the day etc. We choose really simple books ones we nice pictures and short stories. We bought some alphabet flash cards and we printed the alphabet off in big letters and put them all around starting at a and ending at z of course in his bedroom. High enough so that he could not rip them down but low enough that he could see and point to them. We choose letters in color with a symbol such A a with a picture of an apple below. At eighteen months he was at H for horse. He could go from A all the way to H. We would ask him where C was or "Where's the Cow?" and he would point it out. We would mix them up in different order and he would run over to the correct letter. This has proved to be one of best teaching methods so far. We also printed off pictures of ourselves and relatives and posted them up in his room. When you ask him where is Grandpa he will run over to the correct picture and point out Grandpa.

We noticed that some of his words were a little off like he has a hard time with his S's and his F's but with continued effort I am sure he will master this in no time.

Another thing we did is when we go driving somewhere we try to point out different objects on the drive like car and truck and tree and crane. We come to a stop we say stop, When we get a green light we say go. When we go around a curve we say either left or right curve.

We also bought a big picture word book and each night before he goes to bed we ask him about different items in the book, especially items we would of seen that day.

His vocabulary is growing rapidly and we are very proud. He lets us know when he has had enough. Every time he gets a word right we clap and say yeah. When he gets a word wrong we try to encourage him and we try to point him in the right direction. Sometimes we purposely say the wrong word to see if he is paying attention and he will correct us.

Reading is very important and children crave knowledge the sooner you can get your child to read the sooner they will let you know what it is they need.