Teaching your Child to Read

The ability to read is basic to all other education.  We parents want to make sure that we are preparing our children for this all important skill. 

A little about how we went about it.  The twins learned the alphabet pretty much on their own using alphabet blocks, educational videos, and just natural inquisitiveness.  We have read to them all along, but never asked them to read back to us or spent any time teaching them words. 

Then they were reaching kindergarten age and we wanted to assess their abilities.  So we started teaching them simple two and three letter words.  They loved this “game” so we looked for a way to incorporate these words into actual reading.  We found a series of books that systematically starts with this concept and builds on it.  They are the BOB BOOKS.  The illustrations are simple and non-distracting, putting the emphasis on the reading.  We started with the Level 1 box and kept going through Level 3 (there are 5 levels), having them repeat each book until they could go all the way through each one without assistance.  By then they were reading not only the BOB BOOKS, but everything they could get their hands on.

We quickly had to move on to more advanced language and vocabulary building lessons and exercises, but the BOB BOOKS were a great foundation.