Over 78,600 proud parents have used unique methods and lesson plans to successfully teach their children to read early.

Teaching Phonics to Children

Phonics is a step-by-step logical and sequential buildup of sounds, alphabets and words to teach reading ability. Phonics is a necessary part of any good method of teaching children to read. It is the key to mastering words as the first step toward successful reading.

Children are quick learners. They just need to develop a knowledge library of the letters, the sounds represented by the letters, and the connection between sounds of combining the letters to form words. This is a key element of mastering reading. Essentially, through the phonics process, children acquire the skill to pronounce new words, develop clear articulation and develop self-confidence.

The process of teaching your children to read involves three basic principles:

1) Reading for the child, whether it’s a word, sentence, or story, must appeal to your child’s interests.

2) Teaching your child to read must begin with the mastery of the phonemes – the individual sounds which makeup the words.

3) Never pressure or force your child into reading, turning it into a negative “event” in their life. It should be a fun, enjoyable, and rewarding experience. This will require patience and creativity on your part as the parents.

The basic process of teaching phonics and phonemic awareness to children includes:

• first teaching them the letters and letter sounds;
• then you teach them to combine (or blend) different letter sounds to form words;
• this is then followed by reading sentences and simple stories.

This method of teaching also helps the child to spell correctly. Progressively, the various phonic elements can be combined to produce new words. This, in turn, leads to the fun of discovering new words by the child as an “automatic reflex”.

Teaching phonics to children needs just 10 to 15 minutes each day. In fact, these “lessons” should take place in several small sessions every day – such as 4 or 5 session of 3 to 5 minutes each. For older pre-school children, lessons can be slightly longer; overall, several minutes each session is all that’s needed.

One way to start teaching phonics to children is with ear training. With this method, you will help them develop the understanding that words are made up of smaller units of sounds, known as phonemes. When phonemes are combined, words are formed. A few minutes a day is all that you need. The key, however, is consistency and patience.

During these short sessions, sound out words slowly and distinctly. You can do this without even making the child aware that you are trying to teach them.

Simply take words from your everyday speaking to your child and include oral blending sounds into your sentences. For example, if you wanted to ask your child to drink his milk, you could say: “Jimmy or Katy, d-r-i-n-k your m-ilk.” The words drink and milk are sounded out slowly and distinctly. The level of sound separation can be set by you to increase or lower the difficulty. If you see them having a bit of difficulty figuring out that d-r-i-n-k means drink, you can lower the difficulty by blending the word as dr-ink instead.

Alternatively, you could simply pick different words and play blending sounds games with your child. You simply say the sounds of the word slowly, and ask the child try to guess what you are saying.

If you would like to learn about a simple step-by-step program designed to easily teach your children how to read, please click here to watch the video or read more.