Like anyone of us, children love to be good at things. The quicker and easier it is for them to learn something the more confidence they will have and the harder they will try.
Teaching a preschooler to read at home can be either a chore or a pleasure; something your child "takes to" or resists kicking and screaming at every turn.
I recently received an email from a frustrated and exasperated father who was home school preschooling his daughter and had spent 8 (unsuccessful) months trying to teach her to read. This father had tried various popular methods without success. The result was that he was angry and frustrated and his daughter hated reading and wasn't much closer to knowing how to read at all!
Upon examination I discovered that he was going about the process all wrong. Not only was he giving his daughter methods that took too long for her to understand, her lessons had also become boring and because she wasn't seeing any results for herself she was feeling despondent and unhappy.
Don't kill your child's passion for reading before it's even begun
To begin with, you have to show your preschooler that reading is more fun than anything else they've done so far. It is a wonderful new game that they can play with you, and they have your 100% undivided attention for the duration of the "game".
Teaching your child to read is like teaching them to ride a bicycle. All that you really want to do is to get them to ride for a little on their own and without you holding them. Once your child's confidence is sparked, they will become better riders by themselves simply by practicing what you've taught them. You will only have to supervise a little.
Reading requires much of the same process. Start by building your preschooler's confidence in their reading ability and they will take over from there and astound you with their progress.
On the other hand, make reading a chore or a bore, let your child struggle to see their own progress and teaching your preschooler to read will be so much harder and will take a lot longer than you could ever imagine.
So let's have a look at a quick way to get your child to read a book by themselves in the shortest possible time.
25 little words give you access to one third of the English language
This is an amazing truth. The 25 most common words in the English language allow you to read one third of all materials written in English.
So by teaching your child to read these 25 words, they will be able to pick up just about any book and begin reading.
Although phonics is a skill every parent who is home schooling their child must teach their child, by allowing your child to learn to read the 1st 25 words using the look-and-say method, you will be accomplishing 4 very important things:
Not too shabby from just 25 little words!
By increasing the amount of words to incorporate the entire 100 most common words in the English language (these words are freely available on Wikipedia), your child will be able to read over 50% of all written materials.
Once you have accomplished this you can introduce phonics to your preschooler. By now your child should be crazy about reading and books and they will be asking you to teach them more.
