Parenting Tips - Be A Better Parent Each Day

  Before a child learns to read, he or she must first learn the spoken language, and this is one of the first instances where family members such as dad, mom, older siblings, and grandparents play an important role in "teaching" the child the spoken English language.  Whether young children realize it or not, they gain very early exposure to the alphabet when parents sing the alphabet song to them. They begin to develop language skills by being read to and spoken to. One of the keys to teaching children reading early on is by exposing them to alphabet letters, books, and reading to them often. Reading nursery rhymes and children's books are an important part of getting children to understand the printed text. Talk to your children, and talk to them often, whether they understand or not is not important when they're just babies . The more you talk and interact with your little ones, the better they will develop. The key is exposure, and repeated exposure. Once your c...

  Teaching children to read by teaching phonics activities is a lot like doing math, where you have to know what the numbers are, how to count, and you need to learn to add and subtract before learning to multiply and divide.  Teaching phonics to children is no different where you follow a step by step approach by first teaching the child the alphabet letters and phonics sounds, and then teaching them the combination of different letters to create different words, and using words to form sentences. It is a very logical and sequential buildup of phonics knowledge and reading ability. Before a child can learn to read, he or she must first learn the alphabet letters and know the sounds represented by the letters. It's usually easier to teach some consonants and short vowels first before moving on to more complicated things such as consonant digraphs (2 consonants formed to produce one sound, such as "ch" or "ph") and long vowels. As you can see, teaching children...

  Most parents, at one point or another, frets over the education and the development of their children. Many concerned parents research and seek information on the topic of teaching children to read and write.  I for one, am glad to see so many parents wanting to get an early start for their children in reading and writing because studies have shown that developing these abilities early on before entering school provides numerous benefits and advantages later on as the child progresses through school. More worrisome should be the fact that over one third, 38% to be exact, of all grade 4 students cannot even achieve a basic level of reading ability according to the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP). This is an alarming statistic. Will your child become one of the 38% who cannot reach basic reading achievement by grade 4? For most children, this poor ability to read can be easily prevented with early phonemic awareness teaching. Reading must begin early in the ...