Preparing Your Pre-Schooler to Read

As parents, you are the most influential teacher in your child’s life. At Corner Canyon Academy, we encourage you
to look for daily opportunities to help your child gain skills in reading in order to help them thrive in their school years and life to come. As you create daily opportunities for your child, you are helping lay a foundation for a successful reader.

Learning to Read

Helping your child comprehend a printed word helps them create awareness when it is time to write. As they to learn to read, there are 4 things that enter their awareness.

1. Speech: This is the spoken word.
2. Phonemes: Small units of sound that speech is broken into.
3. Letters of the alphabet: Set of symbols that represent sound patterns.
4. Phonics: Sound of the letters combining to form a word.

We have compiled a list of suggestions and activities that can help you get your child ready to read.

• For at least 15 minutes each day, read out loud to your child.
• Get a library card for your child and allow your child to choose books to check out and read.
• Attend and participate in a children’s story hour at the public library.
• Have a variety of options to read to your child from – magazines, picture books, comics and story books, fiction and nonfiction.
• Read about topics they’re interested in.
• If or when your child has a favorite story, reread it, leaving out keywords and ask your child which word is missing.
• While reading, point out the direction of the print and how we read from left to right.
• Allow your child to turn the pages, this is another way to show the direction from left to right.
• When reading ABC books, Dr. Seuss books, have your child “read” or say the repeated lines along with you.
• For comprehension, ask your child what their likes and dislikes of the story was.

Helping your child be prepared for reading and teaching them within the walls of your home sets the tone for years to come. The basics of reading will lead to writing and soon your child is off to learning bigger things, all because you instilled a foundation of reading during their childhood years.