How can my child start to read?

As a teacher, I always find myself doing research on effective strategies for my different types of learners. At the same time, I discover things that I can also do with my own children. One of the things that I'm glad I did was foster the love for reading. For as long as I can remember, my husband and I would read books to our children everyday. It became a norm because today they automatically pick out a book for us to read before bed.

Sometimes they come ask me to read to them in the middle of the day... usually at times where I'm trying to finish my chores. I started off shooing them away and telling them that I will read once I'm done with my chores until one day I realized my children can read to themselves! How can my three and four year old read? Did you know that there are three ways to read a book? I learned this from a strategy I've done for two years now. Click here and here for more information. Anyway, the three ways to read a book are read the pictures, read the words, and retell the story. I told my daughters that reading the pictures works just as well as reading the words! There's nothing to it. So instead of shooing my daughters away and telling them I'll read to them once I'm done with my chores, I simply tell them to read the pictures.

How can your child start to read? Model it by reading to them daily. Then teach them to use the pictures to tell a story. You'll be amazed with how great your child's imagination and story telling is just by using the illustration of a book.

Below is a video of my four year old reading the pictures of a book about Rapunzel. You might notice that she remembers the dialogues from the thousand and one times my husband and I read the book.

Thanks for reading! ;)