How to teach a toddler to read?

Ellen - posted on 08/19/2012

Start with 3 letter words. There are flashcards, or you can write them down for her to sound out. Dr. Suess books like "hop on pop" is an excellent book to start with. They have reader/beginner books out there written by others, and they are all good as long as there is one sentence per page, and it's repetition.

Janine - posted on 08/09/2012

Get index cards and label all the things in her room. For example, "lamp", "bed", "closet". When you ask her to do something like, "can you go put your shoes in the closet?" have her point to the letters and spell the word. You can also label other parts in the house too.

Another thing is to read, read, read! (which it sounds like you do!) Point to the words as you read them or have her point to the words.

Michelle - posted on 08/09/2012

We have bought my daughter early readers and have just started reading them together they have very simple words in them and the same word occurs often throughout the book we sound things out and my daughter loves it, she read her first book to her dad not to long ago and was so proud of herself, my daughter is almost 3 1/2 now. Her motivation is her brother is 11 and she wants to do whatever he can do.

Elfrieda - posted on 08/09/2012

I might be in this situation soon. My two year old knows all the letters even though I have the brakes on, I want him to play and learn this stuff in kindergarten instead, not now, it seems totally not right for his age. I would just put some letters together for her as a game if she wants to read. Like, take the alphabet letters from the fridge d-o-g, now what does that say? Have her sound it out and if she likes it, do c-a-t and then after you've run out of words like that teach her that two o's together make the 'oo' sound, then spell book and cook and look and foot. Let her learn as a game. So every time she asks, do a few words with her. I guess that's the phonics approach.



Or, since she's got all her books memorized, run your finger along the words as you read them, that way she'll be able to practice while already knowing what it is supposed to say.



Another thing I would look at is her motivation. Why does she want to read? Is it that she really likes stories and you obviously can't spend all day reading to her? Is she getting thrills out of all the attention? For my son I'm starting to realize that part of his interest is showing off. If he's looking for attention and I'm all, "Go and play quietly, I'm trying to talk to Daddy right now." he knows that tantrums don't work, but if he runs over to the nearest words and starts spelling out all the letters, we'll stop talking and start staring and laughing because we're just so amazed. Ta-da, he's the centre of attention just like he wanted! I don't think that's the best reason, so I'll need to change my behaviour.