How I taught my 4-year-old to read

Learning to read is a crucial milestone for any child’s development. I feel that as a parent, I play an important role in helping my child acquire this skill as well as develop a love for reading. While it may seem like a huge task, especially if you homeschool your children like I do, I felt that it was beneficial that I divided the process into smaller steps. With each step, we tried to do fun games, activities, and stories while learning how to read. I am sharing our journey and what worked for us. Hopefully, this may give you ideas and inspire you in your teaching efforts.

Also, I want to mention that I chose not to rely on computer programs in teaching my child to read. Occasionally we watched videos related to the topics we learned, helping to reinforce a concept we covered in our lessons. 

Preparation

 

1. Letter recognition. To prepare my child for reading, I started by teaching her the alphabet at the age of two. We sang the ABC song together during our daily walks. I also used large alphabet flash cards and YouTube videos to help with letter recognition (there are also Alphabet bath toys, letter stickers, alphabet blocks, you name it – so many colorful and fun resources). Once she knew the alphabet, I introduced letter sounds to her. At first, this created a little bit of confusion, but I explained that every letter has a name and a sound.

 

2. Reading together. Almost every day I read lots of books to my child. And while I read, I was pointing at the words. This helped to develop her vocabulary and comprehension. I noticed that later it helped with word recognition while she was reading by herself.

 

3. Sight words. Our wonderful Grandma made flashcards with sight words and was practicing them with my child. I also wrote some of the most common sight words on the larger cards and put them on the wall near the desk.

Sight Words Flash Cards

 

4. Phonemic Awareness. Rhyming helps to identify and manipulate individual sounds in words. There are so many books that focus on rhyming. We used a few kindergarten books to learn to identify rhyming words. For a while, we were reading a lot of books by Dr. Seuss. Some of them we read over and over and over again. You probably know that feeling when you fall asleep with rhymes in your head or try not to respond to another adult’s remark with a rhyming quote from Dr. Seuss.

 

5. DIY flashcards. I purchased two packages of message cards from the store Daiso, each containing 30 cards. The cards were sized 2 in. by 4 in. and came in two designs, one featuring Winnie the Pooh and the other featuring a robot and car. The cute characters on the cards made it feel like a game for my daughter. Using a Sharpie, I wrote one letter on each card. However, I made the mistake of writing both uppercase and lowercase letters, which is not recommended, as it is best to start with lowercase letters. 

 

For the non-DIYer, Lakeshore Learning offers magnetic cards, for a price. They have a few different sets of phonics magnetic word building boards: 1) Short vowel words, 2) Long vowel words, 3) Words with digraphs, and 4) Words with blends.

I personally don’t recommend using cards with pictures and words for reading, as it can lead to guessing the word instead of reading it, as my daughter did. For example, a card with a picture of a cat and a CAT word at the bottom.

There are also magnetic letter sets and some of them are only an inch tall. I was worried that the letters “i” and “l” might be a potential choking hazard, so I saved them for later.

 

 

6. Ideas from experts. We found two books that gave me a lot of ideas for our daily lessons and for sound blending. I didn’t follow them exactly but adapted the material to what worked best for my child:

Learning to read CVC words

I started with simple CVC (consonant – vowel – consonant) words. During breakfast, I placed cards with letters on the table in front of her bowl with breakfast and we played a “Word game” while she ate. We did a little bit of our “Word game” throughout the day, focusing on the words we read during breakfast.

I introduced basic phonics rules and sounds gradually. I started with simple words that followed predictable phonetic patterns, like the short sound “a” in words “cat,” “mat,” and “bat.” I did one word at a time, replacing the consonants and keeping the vowel in the middle.

The next day, we reviewed the material from the previous day, and if my child remembered it well, I introduced a new vowel to continue her progress in reading.

There was some confusion about the letters “b” and “d,” trying to figure out which one was which. I found this great visual, which helps a child figure out whether it is “b,” “d,” “p” or “q” on their own: “Easy Letter Reversal Solution.” I used a whiteboard and material from “Kindergarten Jumbo Workbook: Scholastic Early Learners”

to practice differentiating between “b,” “d,” “p,” and “q.”

We enjoyed watching “Alphablocks” videos on YouTube. We sometimes watched one episode after our lesson. They have a fun way of presenting phonics and blending sounds. This channel is made in the UK and no, my child didn’t get a British accent 🙂

There are a lot of phonics workbooks, online videos, games, and printables out there developed for early phonics instruction.

Here is a fun game to practice CVC words:  Word Pop CVC.

 

Magic “e”

We learned how a short vowel changes to a long vowel if there is a magic “e” at the end of the word. The concept was kind of a little bit complicated for a 3-year-old to comprehend. We got a book about the Little Mermaid and read a story about how Ariel gave her voice to Ursula. After giving her voice to the witch, Ariel could not make any sound, but Ursula got a new beautiful voice. I told my daughter that the Magic “e” works in a similar way. It gives its voice to another vowel and becomes silent, allowing the other vowel to have a completely different sound.

Later, we found in the library, a book from the Step into Reading series  “Mouse Makes Magic,” which helped to reinforce the concept.

There is also a useful video on YouTube:

Introducing letter combinations

During our phonics lessons, we progressed to exploring letter combinations like “oo,” “ee,” “all,” “ing,” etc. I wrote the letter combinations on a single card. For example, when we were working with the letter combination “oo,” I arranged three cards on the table: “f,” “oo,” and “t.” Then, during the game, I would replace the consonants while retaining the “oo” card.

To demonstrate the concept of blending these letters together to form a distinct sound, I used a simple technique. Using two fingers, the pointing finger and thumb, I simultaneously pointed at both letters o’s on the card as if I were about to pinch something. This approach conveyed the idea that these letters belonged together, resulting in a different sound.

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In the video below my daughter was already comfortable with the “all” letter combination and didn’t need me to remind her that the sound will be different.  

For “ch,” “ph,” “sh,” “th” and “wh” combinations, I created two distinct sets of cards. The first set was on our regular 2×4 in. reading cards, which we used during our “Word game” to form words like “chip,” “chop,” “chair” and so on. The second set, larger in size at about 4×5 in., found a place on the wall near our play area as a visual for easy access and reference. Like before, I followed the same strategy of introducing one letter combination each day. 

We read a cute book called “Cow Takes a Bow” by Russell Punter to practice the “ow” sound. I mostly read it to her myself, pointing out words with the “ow” sound.

 

Our First books

We began with reading individual words in Kindergarten books with just a few words per topic. Later we transitioned to “Bob Books Beginning Readers,” to practice CVC words. We used an older edition. I believe this is an updated version.

Our first actual books were:

The books listed above contained many sounds, simple words, and had a large font, which made it easier for my child to start reading on her own. We began by reading just one page at a time. As we progressed, we moved on to books with a slightly higher word count, but still with the same large font, and continued to read one page at a time.

Font and a book series

There are a lot of books out there for beginner readers: different stories, different fonts, different difficulty of words. I wanted my child to pick what she liked, the story she wanted to read, the pictures she would like to look at, and, most importantly, the font she would be comfortable reading. She said a hard “no” to the fun books with a smaller font. We went to Target and spent time looking through many books until she found one she liked. I felt it was important that my child made her own decision regarding what she was going to read. It also helped with her commitment to our reading process. Also, some beginner reading books have stickers in them which adds a little fun to the reading process. The Step into Reading series has Story Collection books with 5 different simple stories in one book, which is wonderful in terms of content, volume, and value.

Disney/Pixar Story Collection (Step into Reading)

I didn’t want to use library books at this point, as we were still learning how to treat them gently. After a while, we went to a local library and got library cards for both of us. My child was very excited to have her own library card! We started to go to the library frequently to pick two types of books (those she would read herself and those I would read to her).

 

Books Reading Level

I learned that the “Level 1” reading level is not the same in all book series. When you look at the back of these books they usually have a reading level guide for parents.

Here are the links to the difficulty levels for the book series we use most:

Practicing and repetition

My child progressed to the point where we would check out a bunch of books from the library and read one book a day. As we read, I paid attention to what letter combinations and sounds we needed to work on. I realized that continual repetition was required, so don’t throw away your cards. As needed we reviewed short and long vowels, diagraphs, trigraphs, blending sounds, diphthongs, silent “e,” and bossy “r.” For these purposes, we used flashcards, different workbooks, the whiteboard, and the “Alpha-Phonics: A Primer for Beginning Readers” book mentioned earlier. We also got a lovely set of posters from the store Lakeshore Learning so we would have a visual on the wall. 

 

Recognition

Teaching my child to read has definitely been a journey and luckily we got some help along the way. We are grateful for all the inspiration, support, and books from our Grandma.

There are so many wonderful resources and ideas available online on how to teach children to read. This YouTube video was a good start in our reading journey:

Oh, and one more thing

Don’t forget about snack breaks and rewards 🙂 and remember that when they are cranky or you are cranky, it is better to do reading later.