How to Help My Child Read at Home
How can I help my six year old learn to read?
Normal reading development occurs over a wide range of ages, but sometimes our kids need a little extra help to keep up at school. So what’s a parent to do when their child needs a little nudge?
Read books to them that YOU enjoy. Kids love stories and love being read too. There are so many great children’s books, but sometimes you have to find the right one. If you or your child (or both) have ADHD like we do, you might find yourself getting easily bored with some books, so the easiest thing for me to do was to go to the library after school and read books to my son. If a book is boring for either one of us, we just bail halfway there because there are literally hundreds of books we can read. I usually read about 5 or 6 books in one sitting.
Reread favorite books. Early readers gain confidence from repetition, and when your child is able to do independent or guided reading later, these will be great books to begin with. It’s totally ok for kids to start by reading books they have almost memorized.
Work on phonemic awareness. Every word in English is made up of about 44 different sounds, called phonemes. Phonemic awareness is critical to reading and spelling success, and I wouldn’t even work on reading words on a page until phonemic awareness skills are built. As a tutor, I work with students on phonemic awareness before anything else.
Read nursery rhymes and poetry. These books help kids develop phonemic awareness and they are fun to read to boot!
Listen to audiobooks together. I’ll let you in on my dirty little secret. I hate reading bedtime stories. My husband usually does a great job with this duty, but when he’s not home, my child and I listen to an audiobook together. Most of the popular young children’s chapter books are available on audiobook, and listening together is a fun bedtime activity. Bonus: If you are looking for a cheap source of audiobooks, most libraries have audiobook services.