Reading and writing are fundamental abilities for younger children. Reading is an essential skill anywhere and everywhere, but still many parents ask how to teach reading skills as they want t work with their children at home.
Learning to read is an important landmark for preschool kids. Fun activities at the kindergarten level always boost the learning process of children. Who wouldn’t like to improve reading?
Today we will discuss some of the kids’ activities to improve reading skills and learn English. If you teach your child to read or you just would like to learn to read faster these tips may inspire you.
1. Curiosity enhances learning:
All real triumphs that a baby achieves result from are instructions that a child receives through vision and hearing. The more interesting they are the faster we master it.
Every new activity he sees or hears makes new neural connections in his brain, and thus he learns. Education, especially at the kindergarten level, depends on the environment of the kid. Therefore if we want to teach our child to read we may need a portion of creativity to involve our different senses.
If you can create such an environment that makes your kid curious enough to look for correct answers while learning to read or learning any other thing, you have taken the initial step towards your kid’s success.
Let’s do not forget that kids do many things via emotions.
Smiling, jumping or your energetic voice can decide if the activity is interesting enough. If you are interested, I describe some interesting ideas and solutions in my book “Emotional Dilemma”.
2. Repetition:
Reading books with kids is an elementary method to build up premature literacy skills. Books with recurring vocabulary and conventional content encourage children to take part in the reading practice. Therefore, repetitions can also help on how to help a child read faster or just teach children to read.
Children start guessing the ending word in a book with rhyming text. Select preschool books that contain repetitive text. Focus on topics your child enjoys, and read each one multiple times. Repetition encourages comprehension.
Are you sometimes bored with reading your 4-year-old daughter the same story over and over? Yes, this is repetition.
For them, every word is a new stimulation contrary to us who have already heard it many many times in our long lives.
3. Letter identification through tracing:
When kindergarten students start tracing, copying, and writing, they start reading what they are writing. So the first step is to trace letters. We can learn it through play. Children love this kind of simple activity and cannot wait to do more. To see more check here.
4. Leave the gadgets. They might be an obstacle on how to teach reading skills.
Numerous gadgets and toys surround children of the 21st century. They spend more time with these gadgets instead of humans like parents and siblings. It is not bad, but what we all need is the relation.
Spend as much time as you can with your child. Talk to him/her in English instead of your native language. Talk about him, about family, and households. Tell stories to your children. It will enhance his / her vocabulary.
One of the best ways on how to teach reading skills is reading to your child every evening. This activity develops imagination and makes children be willing to read themselves in the future.
5. Storybooks with audio:
Beautifully illustrated picture books and music-based audio stories are available in markets. They may be great alternatives or complements if you think about how to teach reading skills. Preschool kids see these pictures and listen to the audio to understand the picture story.
Leave your kid with a picture book and that audio. If you know the story, the reading is easier.
6. Phonic awareness:
In general reading and better comprehension skills, phonemic awareness is the most crucial factor for kindergarten students.
Significantly, kids are made aware of the sounds that each letter makes. It includes pronunciation of words, the merger of sounds, dividing words into segments, isolating starting and ending sounds, and recognizing words that start or end with the same sounds.
A tracing letter book can be great fun by repeating single letters and making them sound even funny. This way we memorize faster.
You can also hide it in songs and simply a melody of the language.
7. Book Shopping:
While purchasing a book, children must be asked to select one for them. If we want to teach children to read we need to find a story interesting for them. Let your child shop a book of his / her interest other than the preschool syllabus.
Mostly he will opt for a storybook. It will not only encourage the kid to read that book but will also boost the confidence of the child.
8. Fresh materials:
Kids enjoy reading early on but become bored of it soon. Replace the books after some time and produce fresh reading materials. Same old books can also be reproduced after some time.
9. Reading demonstration:
If you want to teach your children to read you need to become a good example to follow. Kindergarten students see and learn from parents’ and teachers’ habits. Try reading a book yourself daily, even if you are not fond of it. Ensure that your children see you reading at home. It will establish your kid as a regular reader.
Try reading out a few paragraphs loudly so that children can hear the voice modulation and reading pace to set them with accurate, fluent reading. This is another way of repetition that can help to teach reading skills.
10. Raise the level:
Occasionally, ask your child to read a book of a higher level than preschool. It will expose them to new vocabulary and make them confident that they can read higher-level books.
11. How to teach reading skills? Change the course:
Kids learn fast when coupled with enjoyment. Make reading joyful for your child. If your kid doesn’t like the topic of the story or book, change it immediately.
12. Competitions and Appreciations:
Try establishing a healthy competition in reading amongst your kindergarten children and appreciate them for this. For kids, your appreciation means much more than for you.
13. Never discourage your child:
Tell your child that he/she is doing great and you like what and how he/she has read. Praise him/her by saying a Great job, Well done, or excellent.
Commendation fosters a child’s self-belief and encourages the learning process.
14. Educational games:
Kids of kindergarten grade like playing educational games. Please encourage them to play these games besides other physical games. If you like board games you may consider changing some of the rules and incorporating simple reading activities.
15. Acting a story:
Preschool books bring amazing stories. Encourage your kids to act out scenes from these. Dialogue delivery of their favorite characters in a story will add meaning to their words and help them learn meanings.
16. Make them teacher:
Let your kids trying to teach you what they know; it will enhance and their learning. By this, kids will start thinking outside their current education square.
Explaining what they know to someone else will quickly bring to light the flaws in their knowledge and see them eager to fill in the gaps.
17. The adventurers’ journal:
One of the fantastic ways to encourage kids to write and read can be having their own journal. It works for me. If you think it also may work for you you can check HERE
18. How to teach reading skills? Encourage Visualization:
Instruct your kids to generate fantasy images when reading, called brain or mind movies. Advise them to imagine the situation in the story and try thinking like the character of the story. Instruct them to portrait the action of the story in their mind.
Envisaging the process of a story is a fun way to improve students’ reading comprehension. One of my favorite activities is asking “What if…”: “What if she had brown hair instead of blue…”.
19. Invite your kid, but never task:
Invite your kid to read any particular book or chapter but never ask him to read out any particular book/page in a limited time. They will feel tasking like a burden, and invitation will encourage the child towards reading. 20. Learning to read is a marathon, and don’t try to sprint the marathon. Never expect your kindergarten-level children to run through. Allow them to do it through routine preschool activities. Always encourage them and let them take their time.