Is your child having trouble learning how to read?  Are you lost in knowing how to help him/her?  Don't worry.  Reading is a developmental process for each child.  It can only be learned as each child reaches a state of readiness.  Even though it may take a team of teachers in school to guide your child through the process, there are many things you can do at home to promote your child's reading success.

Baby Steps for Reading Success:

• Read to your child each day.

• Play rhyming games orally or with pictures.

• Clap syllables that you hear in simple words.

• Say tongue-twisters together.  Talk about how many of the words start with the same sound.

• Help your child with words.  Make labels for simple objects in your home.

• Show your child a picture and ask him/her to give you a few words to go with as as you write it under the picture.     

These "baby-steps" are small things to do, but they are so mighty in getting your child ready to read.  Come back to this site in October to see more specific phonemic awareness building skills that are happening in the classrooms of Newport Nation.  

Gail Hook

Reading Specialist at NES