Literacy for Toddlers: How to Help Young Children Learn to Read

Teaching your child to read should begin well before your child ever enters school. In fact, successful reading instruction can even begin with you toddler. The sooner you start your child on the path to literacy, the sooner they will find success and fulfillment in school and in daily life. It is essential to begin this process as early as possible. Children who begin kindergarten with little or no reading instruction will often spend the rest of their school years trying to catch up to their peers. That is why it is so important to begin this process of literacy with your children from the time they are very young.

Successful reading instruction for your child begins with a solid conceptual foundation. The first step is to read to you child. Even young toddlers will benefit from this. As you read to your child, teach them the concepts of print. Where are the front and back covers? Where does it tell the reader what to say? Which direction do we read? As a child learns these ideas and familiarizes themselves with the concepts of reading, they will be better prepared to move to reading themselves.

Phonemic awareness is another key to prepare young children to read. Phonemic awareness has to do with the sounds of speech. This step is often neglected because we don't always think of it as part of the reading process. But phonemic awareness is essential to a child's ability to read and understand text. Practice with your child to identify the beginning and ending sounds of common words. Have your child take words apart to identify all the individual sounds, as well as put sounds together to make words. As your child learns that words are made up of individual sounds and that these sounds together provide meaning, your child is conceptually prepared to read. Again, don't think your toddler is too young to practice these concepts. Even a 2 or 3 year old child can begin to understand the sounds that make up words and can learn, with practice, to isolate them.

Concepts of print and phonemic awareness are an essential foundation for good readers. When a child becomes familiar with these, they are then ready to start learning letter names and sounds and the process of blending these sounds together, the first concepts we usually think of when we teach literacy.

Building a strong foundation of print concepts and phonemic awareness will provide essential skills that your young toddler needs to progress. As you teach your child to read, remember to have patience and do your best to make the learning process enjoyable. All children learn differently and will respond to different approaches. Be flexible with your child and help them understand that successful reading will be the gift of a lifetime.

Source: Author's experience working in elementary education.