Ways to Make Learning To Read Fun – Part 1

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This is a bit of a diversion from my usual theme, but it’s been on my mind for a while and I know that some people struggle with helping their kids learn to read since I have had some questions about it.

So here are a few ideas and resources from what I have learned in teaching my three children so far. Please excuse the multiple links – I was not sure whether to link to Amazon UK or US since I have readers from both places, but in the end realised I could do both! 
1.       Teaching Letters
My first goal was always to teach the letters of the alphabet. Here are some of the things I did during the day or at different times, from as early an age as I could really!
  • Sang the alphabet song to them and with them.
  • Got books from the library or charity shops which had the alphabet in, in various forms, and read them aloud. 
    • Dr. Seuss ABC – they loved this and often memorised what it said if I read it enough! 

    • First Dictionary – this is great for showing a bunch of things that start with the same letters so that they get examples of how the letter is used, and the pictures are fun.
    • D is for Dinosaur – a cool Christian rhyming book to use for teaching the alphabet that also explains when dinosaurs really were created!
    • A is for Adam – another fun Christian book with the gospel from Genesis, in ABCs 
    • ABC Learn the Alphabet with Thomas – the children loved trying to figure out what it was in the picture that matched the letter. My only problem with this book was that some of the sounds were not the first ones I usually teach, for example normally you would teach the short ‘I’ vowel sound but the picture they had for their ‘I’ was ‘Ice-cream’ which is the long i! 

  • Starfall website – www.starfall.comis a great website which has loads of free stuff for learning to read that children can pretty much do themselves by about the age of 3 and a half. So for a long time I let them go by on there for 15 minutes a day.
  • Magnetic letters – I had a bunch of magnetic letters which I put on the fridge for them to play around with, and when I had time I would help the children with them, seeing if they could put the alphabet in order and write their name, or ‘mum’ or ‘dad’. These are the ones I bought when my old ones started having too many missing:


2.       Teaching Letter Sounds

Once they were 3 years old I figured they would be starting nursery school if they were in the system, so I should at least start teaching them letters! I began with 15 minutes of ‘reading’ a day.

If they knew their letter names well I would start with teaching a letter a day, with its main sound. I now know that many schools teach a letter a week, but my kids seemed to do pretty well with a letter a day.

For each letter I would first show it to them on Starfall, in their ABCs section. Then I would read it to them in the ABC books I had (shown in the teaching letters part above), and then I would print off the Starfall printoutfor that letter and talk it through with them, letting them trace the letters with help and colour in the pictures.

I would try and get them to repeat the sound each time we came across it. “Can you say ‘a’?”

We would then get some old catalogues and find pictures of things that began with that letter, cut them out and stick them on a piece of paper. Then we hung up the papers on the fridge to look at.

During the day I would often ask them, “What is that letter called? And what sound does it make?”

Once they had gone through the whole alphabet I would do a bit of review to make sure they had got the sounds down.

The key way I did this was to write each letter on blank index cards (the uppercase and lowercase letter next to each other) and then test them. I would show them the card and they had to say the sound. They usually enjoyed this! If they didn’t know it I would put it aside and try it again at the end.

I also made games out of it, like putting all the letters down on the table and saying, ‘Where’s the C?’, saying the letter sound rather than just the letter. When they found it they got to keep it (at least for 10 minutes anyway!!)

Or we would vary that by turning them all upside down. Then they had to pick one and turn it over and if they got the sound right they could keep it, if not they had to turn it upside down again.

My two sons got this pretty quickly but my daughter took what seemed like ages to get it! So with her I did even more than this and used the first part of ‘The Ordinary Parent’s Guide To Teaching Reading’ (which I skipped with the boys) to help her.
This involved learning a rhyme, so each day we would learn the rhyme for one letter. I then went through one letter each day with her, until she knew the whole rhyme by heart.

Then I tested her again with the cards, and if she couldn’t remember one I started the rhyme off to help her. It starts like this:

B stands for b in b,b, bat
C stands for k in k,k, cat and so on.

We varied it a little bit, accenting words to make it sound silly, and making a tune out of it for fun!

Eventually she got where she knew the letter sounds well, so we could start with the next bit!

3. Making Reading Enjoyable

  • Relax – I think this is key to all this. If they feel you are putting pressure on them then they will lose enjoyment. If you want them to love reading, then I think it is so important that they enjoy it! 
  • Be consistent – I was consistent in getting them to have their 15 minutes a day once they were 3 years old, but I made it fun.
  • Don’t stress – Don’t worry if they are not learning as quickly as you wish they would. I just tried to be patient and start again if need be.
  • Take a break if necessary – Sometimes I took a few weeks break if it seemed like they weren’t getting anywhere, and then started back up again, and a lot of times those few weeks made a big difference and we did a lot better afterwards.
  • Try to read to them a bit every day – some people do bedtime stories. We tend to do a Bible story in the evening, and then I try and read a book to them during the day at some point. Now that I have 3 children and am more busy that doesn’t happen as much, but my older two are reading to my youngest so I don’t think he’s doing too badly!
  • Try to give them some book reading time each day – even when they couldn’t read, first thing thing in the morning I would have them sit with some books in bed and look at the pictures. And once they had stopped naps I would give them books to read for a while before I let them play quietly at nap time. You probably need to limit TV and computers to certain times in order to encourage them to read.
  • Go to the library – I try to go the library regularly with them to get books for each child, to encourage their love of reading. We often don’t get around to returning them in time, but thankfully our libray has a policy of no late fees for young children! 

My next part to this will be about teaching blending and further reading. So please check back soon if you are interested!

Feel free to share any more tips or resources you have in the comments – I have just shared what I used.

Linking up to Raising Arrows and Wise Woman Builds Her Home

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