I'm so excited to announce my third picture book entitled Unicycle Dad. This is a story from my childhood with my unicycle-riding single father. In it, the character Sarah wants to learn to ride the unicycle like her father but must learn to do hard work and persevere in life as well so she can soar like her dad. Coming 2024!

Learn to read programs with manuals, workbooks, flashcards, and videos are great resources for parents and teachers to support their young kids in embarking on one of the most wonderful journeys in a kid’s life: the journey to unlocking the key to stories. Whatever stories they like. Stories full of humor, whimsy, real-life, friendships…stories that keep kids coming back for more and more.

If you could, on this learn-to-read journey, start with those engaging stories—wouldn’t you? After teaching three kids to read (my youngest is still working on it) almost exclusively from reading real books, the following are my best tips. Note that while they are broken down by age group, kids develop skills at different times and that’s totally normal.
 
Ages 0-3
Form reading habits: This is a great age to establish a reading habit such as a bedtime read-aloud, an after dinner reading hour, or an afternoon quiet hour.
 
Introduce basic mechanics: While reading aloud with your youngster, show them how to turn pages, that the squiggly lines on the page form words and the words on the page don’t change, and that you read from left to right (use your finger to follow along while reading).
 
Okay, here are the biggies for this age group…
 
Learn the alphabet and letter sounds:
ABC books: My favorites are still…
The ABC Book by Dr. Seuss
Chicka Chicka Boom Boom by Bill Martin, Jr. and John Archambault, illustrated by Lois Ehlert
Hint: Sometimes read these book by saying the letter sounds instead of the letter names. The rhyme will be lost that way, but it’s an easy way to reinforce learning.
 
Videos are a great tool for learning the alphabet and letter sounds as well. Our favorites are:
The Letter Factory by Leapfrog
Meet the Phonics: Letter Sounds by Preschool Prep (available on You Tube (273) Meet the Phonics - Letter Sounds (FREE) | Preschool Prep Company - YouTube)
 
Books with big font size: Try asking your child to point or touch letters you call out. “Can you find a B on this page?” or “Can you touch a word that starts with the “b” sound?” Because their eyes are growing and their visual discrimination is not fully developed yet, try to avoid doing this with books with a very small font size. A couple of my favorites are:
Where’s the Poop? By Julie Markes, illustrated by Susan Kathleen Hartung (bonus potty training!)
I’m Going to Catch My Tail by Jimbo Matison
 
Encourage them to “read aloud”: So that they get used to actively participating in reading, encourage them to “read” words. While reading their favorite books, try pausing and letting them supply the word you aren’t saying. Put your finger under the word so they know which one they are “reading.” This works especially well with any book they have partially memorized, books with repetitive words or phrases, and rhyming books. My favorites are:
Hop on Pop and most Dr. Seuss books
Pete the Cat and His Four Groovy Buttons by Eric Litwin, illustrated by James Dean
At the Old Haunted House by Helen Ketteman, illustrated by Nate Wragg
 
Ages3+
Model blending:
After the letter sounds are mostly learned, you can start teaching your child to blend the sounds together to form words. This is usually the biggest step between pre-reading and actual reading and often happens sporadically anywhere between three and seven years of age. With your finger under words while reading aloud, make the individual sounds and then blend them together to form the word. Have your child make the individual sounds and try to “smoosh” the sounds together. Don’t worry if they can’t hear or understand what the final word should be. That’s the sporadic development part.
If you would like a program on how to teach reading, take a look at Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons. Amazon.com: Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons: Revised and Updated Second Edition: 8601421562775: Engelmann, Siegfried, Haddox, Phyllis, Bruner, Elaine: Books
You can follow this book lesson by lesson and/or take the methods from the book and apply while reading fun books with your child.
 
Practice “sounding it out”:
When first introducing this skill, start with words containing only single letter phonograms (one letter makes one sound). Digraphs (two letters representing a single sound, such as “ay” or “sh”) are very common in English and as such books almost always contain these words, even in beginning readers or leveled readers (just try writing a story without the word ‘the’). But no worries! You can still have your child practice sounding it out while reading real books. Tips:
 

• Read any desired book with your finger under the words and pause at any appropriate words you want your child to practice sounding out. Good starter words are words such as cat, in, on, not, etc. I recommend starting with words with the short vowel sound as opposed to the long vowel sound. Sometimes kids get fixated on the long vowel sound since they are so used to hearing the name of the letter so extra practice with the short vowels is great.

Two of my favorite book series for this are:
Frog and Toad books by Arnold Lobel
Elephant and Piggie series by Mo Willems
 

• Read books with controlled vocabulary, such as leveled readers. In these, there will be more words your child can practice sounding out, but you may need to supply some words where appropriate. My personal favorites are:

The Bob Books by Bobby Lynn Maslen, illustrated by John R. Maslen
Progressive Phonics Beginner Books available for free here Progressive Phonics - Beginner
 

• Pay attention to the sounds of the vowels. You are probably familiar with the short sound and the long sounds of each vowel, but the letter ‘A’ actually makes a third sound (as in ‘father’) and vowels also have a schwa sound (a sort of loosening of the sound, for more details watch (273) The Schwa /ə/ Sound - How to Pronounce the Schwa - How to Improve English Pronunciation - YouTube). So, when sounding out, if your child makes a sound for a vowel that isn’t exactly right, just model the correct sound for the word and move on.

 
Introduce advanced phonics:
After your child starts to get the hang of sounding out words, even if they aren’t quite blending yet, you can start introducing the idea of “letter combos,” the silent ‘e’, and long vowels. If you want to educate yourself on phonics, I like Denise Eide’s The Logic of English which covers the most common phonics rules in an accessible way. But here are some tips for introducing these three ideas for a beginning reader to be able to read the most common words:

• Letter Combos – Tell your child that some letters join together to make one sound. The easiest ones to start with are ‘ch’, ‘th’, and ‘sh’. Not only do they occur frequently, but they are easy to identify since they follow the pattern of being linked with the letter ‘H’. (The ‘th’ sound is hard for young kids to pronounce and it’s normal for many kids to not be able to properly pronounce that one at this age. They may make an ‘f’ or ‘l’ sound instead. As long as the sound they make is however they pronounce that sound when speaking, then it’s ok for now.)

Note that many, many vowel sounds are letter combos but these ones can get complicated as their sounds overlap. I suggest not starting with vowel combos, and if you come across words with them (like said, bread, rain, etc.) just explain that it’s a vowel combo, make the sound, and move on. Many of these they will pick up naturally from lots of practice reading, and the advanced phonics rules will be covered more when learning to spell.

• The Silent ‘e’ Rule – When there’s an ‘E’ at the end of the word with a consonant before it and a vowel before the consonant, the ‘E’ is silent and the vowel becomes a long sound (make, made, like, etc. There are exceptions, such as the word love.). For now, simply tell your child the ‘e’ at the end is silent and makes the vowel have the long sound or the “other” sound. Here’s a fun song from Preschool Prep about the silent ‘e’. (273) Silent e Song - Preschool Prep Company - YouTube
• Vowels at the end are long – Vowels at the end of a syllable make their long sound (The word baby divided into syllables is ba /by. If you wanted to turn the long a sound into a short a sound, the word would have to be spelled babby… bab / by.) For the beginning reader, introduce this idea with single syllable words that end in a vowel like be, no, and so (There are some exceptions, notably, ‘to’ and ‘do’.). There’s no need to go into syllables at this stage, but these little words are common enough that it’s useful to have some kind of explanation.

 
Once those ideas are introduced, you and your child together will be able to practice many words in real books. I like using The Primer by Margaret Free and Harriette Taylor Treadwell (available for free Reading--literature (googleusercontent.com)) to practice bringing it all together, especially after the child has begun to blend sounds into words. Below is a video I recently made of my youngest child practicing reading with me using The Primer.
 
Any book works, though. As you’re reading together, focus on the stage your child is at and introduce new ideas slowly. Reading takes a lot of practice. Thankfully there are many wonderful books to enjoy. Happy reading!