3 ways you may already be helping your child learn to read—and what to try next

Reading is one of the hardest things your child will ever learn to do. It involves both technical skills—like decoding text—and comprehension skills, like inferring and predicting. Learning to read takes a long time, and how your child feels along the way makes a big difference. 

Reading books, singing songs, and reciting the alphabet are all important practices you may already be doing with your child. Now, you can try these simple tweaks to broaden and deepen their early reading experiences.

Already reading to your child every day? Try pausing and asking questions

Reading to a young child often means repeating many of the same books over and over again 🙃 To add some variation to the experience, talk about the book as you go along. This is known as dialogic reading. Having a conversation about the story can help your child learn new vocabulary and increase their reading comprehension. 

For example, you can ask questions or point out interesting details you see in the photos or illustrations. Start with questions you know your child can answer: “What is this animal?” or “What color is Max’s shirt?” If your child seems engaged in the conversation, try more challenging questions like, “What do you think will happen next?” or “How is Zoe feeling in this picture?”

Wordless picture books, like Sita’s Hike to the Beach from The Reading Skill Set, are a great way to practice dialogic reading. A story told in pictures naturally requires you to wonder aloud, ask questions, and find ways to interact with the photos. It may be a while before your child can tell the entire story on their own, but they can use the pictures and your prompts to tell more of the story each time.

Already singing songs together? Try clapping out the syllables

Music supports all kinds of early skills, including pattern recognition, simple math concepts, and social-emotional learning. Singing songs together, in particular, helps your child understand that words are made up of individual sounds—just as music is made up of individual beats. 

This ability to isolate sounds within language is known as phonological awareness, a key early literacy skill. Syllables are a great place to start because they’re among the largest and most recognizable units of sound within a word. In fact, syllables can be thought of as the beats of a word. 

To practice, begin by clapping out the beats to a song: “The it·sy bit·sy spi·der went up the wa·ter spout.” Go slowly and make sure to clap once for each syllable. Invite your child to clap along—they will likely be off-rhythm ❤️

You can also play with syllables whenever you read a book with rhythmic language, like Making Muffins or Happy Either Way. As you read, tap your finger on the page once per syllable and encourage your child to join you. This is a good thing to do when you find yourself reading a favorite book over and over again, as your child will likely be able to recite some sections of it by heart.

Already teaching the alphabet song? Try linking each letter to its most common sound

Many young children learn to sing the alphabet song, and reciting a sequence is certainly a valuable skill. But to read, your child needs to learn that each letter in the sequence has its own shape and represents a specific sound. The shapes combine to make text on a page and the sounds combine to make the words we read.

To help your child make the connection between a letter’s name, shape, and sound, start with lowercase letters—which appear more often in books—and their most common sounds. For example, you can show your child a printed letter s and say, “ This letter makes the sss sound, like at the beginning of the word snake.”

The Wooden Letter Sound Blocks and Movable Alphabet from The Reading Skill Set are a great way to practice. The blocks come in sets of four and introduce six letter sounds at a time. The goal of the activity is to find four images—one per block—that share the same beginning sound. Once your child does this, the corresponding letter from the Movable Alphabet fits on top to confirm the match.

The Reading Skill Set

A phonics-based program that motivates
your child to read through play.

Learn more

Learn more about the research

Swanson, E., Wanzek, J., Petscher, Y., Vaughn, S., Heckert, J., Cavanaugh, C., Kraft, G., & Tackett, K. (2011). A synthesis of read-aloud interventions on early reading outcomes among preschool through third graders at risk for reading difficulties. Journal of Learning Disabilities, 44(3), 258–275. 

Wolff, U., Gustafsson, JE. Early phonological training preceding kindergarten training: effects on reading and spelling. Read and Writing 35, 1865–1887 (2022).