The good news is, your preschooler loves books (and they provide so many literacy benefits).
The bad news is, books are terrible for teaching your child HOW to read.
How many kids have I seen whose confidence is totally crushed by books?? Once we have taught our preschoolers their letter sounds we think “ok, they are ready”. We head to the section of the library labeled Beginning Readers, hoping to find something easy for kids to read to bring home with us. We get home, crack open a book and ask, “What’s this word?” And the immediate reaction is: tears! Frustration! “I can’t!”
Honestly, most of those “beginning readers” or “level 1” books aren’t really designed with your child in mind. Sure, they are simplified, but they are still packed with words that aren’t decodable for your child: 2 syllable words, words with complex patterns like “all”, and tricky words that your child needs to be explicitly taught like “your” and “was”.
For most children, attempting books too early can be really discouraging. As a mom of a 4 and 6 year-old and a reading specialist, I’ve seen how hard the transition can be. But there is so much you can do to support your child’s journey from letters to books. All we have to do is tackle the skills necessary for books, so that your child can feel really confident from the get-go.
So… what skills do kids need before books feel easy and fun? Let’s break it down. The biggest hold-up for kids is that books are very intimating. If your child knows letters (and maybe can even read cvc words!), they will open up a book and think “That is so many words, and then the next page has even more. I can’t do this.” They are not seeing easy words like you and I see. They are seeing long words, words with unfamiliar patterns, and words that really don’t make any sense to them. And they may not have ever read a single sentence before! They don’t have the fluency and stamina to read whole pages in even the simplest books. And just slugging through books until your child starts to pick up on those skills is exhausting (for you and for them). Instead, we can prepare our kids for easier book reading by teaching a few skills (over the course of a few months- don’t rush it):
- Teach phonics. I know this seems obvious but most parents skip this step. Just because your child knows letter sounds, that doesn’t mean that words will be easy. Even simple words like cub and mat. And if they can’t decode even the simplest words, books are not the place to learn that skill.
Reading words is a 2 part skill: phonics + blending. Even if your child knows letters, we have to actually teach them to blend those letters into a word! Don’t worry though, it’s not too tough and I will give you the step-by-step guide in this blog post.
Once they are decoding simple words, kids need to learn a few more phonics skills before your child can read the words in books, which are often 2-syllable. I created a simple guide to teaching phonics skills so you know the exact skill you need to teach next. You can find it here.
There’s 2 simple strategies I teach for words: teach them to spell the words, then practice blending those words with games. Download that free phonics guide and have your child start spelling words, working your way through each skill. Anything your child can spell, they can read! Then you can use these 9 games to practice reading those words! These are specifically for those words that follow predictable phonics patterns, but books aren’t made of only simple words…
- Teach tricky words. You know those words that don’t follow the rules? Or have tricky patterns that your child hasn’t learned yet, like “there”, “your”, “look”, and “make”! These words are so common in books, but they aren’t automatic for kids. We have to teach them explicitly!
Thankfully, research has shown that we can teach these tricky words instead of just expecting our kiddos to memorize them. It can take dozens of repetitions, with flash cards or in books, to memorize a word, but with the heart word method children learn tricky words in just 1 to 4 repetitions. I outline the heart word method in this youtube video. It’s super simple, and you can replicate it with any word your child needs to learn. But I also share weekly heart word lessons within Play to Read Plus to take the guesswork out of teaching these tricky words.
- Teach sentences. Imagine reading a book if you have never read sentences? How overwhelming! Once your child has started reading words easily, sentences are the next step you can’t skip. The most important step is to use decodable sentences at the start. By decodable I mean that “able to be read using the phonics skills your child knows and the tricky words they have learned”. It means your child doesn’t need to guess any of the words.
My favorite way to do this is to take the exact phonics skills kiddos are working on and combine those words with the tricky words they already know in a sentence pyramid! Sentence pyramids are a great way to simplify sentences because they build upon themselves. You can download a free one here and try out this strategy with your own child. I have created sentence pyramids for each phonics skill within the blending and phonics module in Play to Read Plus +, and they have come in handy for my own 6 year old who isn’t quite ready for books yet.
- Bonus (not necessary) Decodable books. I have mixed feelings about decodable books. Books like Bob Books are nice to have around because they have simple phonics patterns and are more “readable”. Hence they are called decodables! But some kids really need the repeated practice of reading words that follow a phonics pattern, and books are pretty limited for that.
That’s why I LOVE using games. I can target the exact skill my kids are working on but in a way that is really motivating to them. The repetition that games provide cannot be beat. With my own kids I’ve noticed we can master one phonics skill just about every week when we play games because they are able to internalize those patterns quickly. I add words to board games, tic tac toe, connect 4, bingo, and more. They are having so much fun and I love how quickly they are making progress. You can watch this quick free masterclass on how I use games to teach phonics skills.
It can take some time to put the foundations in place so that your child can feel confident about books. Don’t rush the process though. All it takes is 15 minutes a day to teach phonics + tricky words + sentences. The key is to teach these skills alongside reading books to your child. Think of reading as a 2 part process: teaching HOW to read and learning from WHAT they read. When you read to your child, they are learning so much just listening to you. Vocabulary, story plot, empathy, what leadership looks like, lifelong lessons, facts, and how to relax and enjoy a good story. They aren’t learning HOW to read when you read to them, but don’t stop reading to them. It just means you can actually teach them the how so that they have confidence to read anything!
Here for your reading journey,
Delainey
PS want help making the most of those precious 15 minutes a day? Play to Read Plus + is the hub for all things reading confidence, including phonics games, sentence practice, and weekly tricky word lessons (+ so much more). Join the reading revolution 🙂
