Phonics Reading Pro has noticed that parents are often the first to see when their children begin to recognize all letters can take two forms: capital and lower-case. In the early stages of reading it’s not important to explain when and why capital letters are used. However, as your child takes notice you should take the opportunity to introduce the rules of using capital letters vs. lower-case. Just make sure this is in conjunction to when your child’s teacher is doing the same.

If you want to introduce this concept early in your at-home phonics reading practice, invest in alphabet cards that can be mounted to your child’s wall, much like those seen in kindergarten classes. These are helpful because they show the capital and lower-case letter next to each other, so if your child knows the form of the letter in lower case they can deduce that the other capital letter is the same. There are also fun, colorful pictures to illustrate the letters so they make fun and useful room decorations!  Why not use these tools as tools for your child’s early lessons in phonics reading?

Phonics Reading Pro wants you to know that a key to your child’s success in learning reading is to coordinate at-home lessons with what your child on being taught at school. If you are fortunate enough to have a teacher that uses phonics as their main avenue of teaching reading then use this to your advantage. Phonics is taught in a very structured manner, so if you communicate with your child’s teacher and explain that you’d like to do additional reading practice at home, they will more than likely be very happy to give you a copy of their lesson plan so that you can follow along in your practice time with your child. With this knowledge in hand, focus your lessons on the specified phonograms by using books that feature them, writing words that include them,  playing fun games and singing songs that showcase them, etc. Let your child’s teacher play the lead, and you take the supporting role.

We hope that you’ll find working with your child’s teacher is easy and enjoyable! Do what you can to facilitate a good working relationship early on– it will pay off in the end! The parent-teacher relationship is vital to academic success for your child, especially when it comes to early lessons in phonics reading.

Here at Phonics Reading Pro we believe that there is a “write way to reading”, that is have your child write out words as well as read them. Everyone learns differently. Some of us learn best by hearing, others by reading, and some by doing. When your child is just learning to read it isn’t easy to know which style of learning is going to work best for them. Therefore, do a little bit of everything! Read the books, write the focus words, and build the focus words with a movable alphabet. Through one or more of these methods your child’s ‘light bulb moments’ will start happening with more frequency and before you know it they’ll be begging you for more reading time!

Keep your child’s word lists together so you can make mini books with them. For example, when your child writes out the most frequent short vowel ‘a’ words they read, staple them together and make a special cover for them. Have your child sign their name on the cover and read it to friends, family, and all that will listen! They will all be impressed by your child’s phonics reading skills!  

Phonics Reading Pro wonders if these words remind you of a previous discussion we’ve had:  The, Your, Of, Are, Come, To, For, Have, What…

If you answered “sight words”, you are correct! Sight words are those little tricksters that might throw you a curveball when you are trying to teach your child how to sound out words phonetically. Just try sounding out “your” when the vowels are pronounced with their short sound: “y (as in yoyo) o (as in octopus) u (as in umbrella) and r (as in rabbit). That doesn’t sound anything like “your” does it? If you tried to teach your child that way they’d be totally confused!

That’s why it’s important to introduce sight words early. Let your child know there are certain words that can’t be sounded out called sight words. After that you’ll have to teach your child sight words through rote memory (repetition) to recognize words that can be sounded out and words that can’t. After a while your child will be able to see a sight word coming a mile away and be able to tell you “that’s a sight word isn’t it?”

In other words, sight words are just a small stepping stone for your child to cross before becoming a phonics reading pro

I think one of the things that make Phonics Reading most fun for kids to learn is not only its simplicity, but also how easy it is to learn it by playing games! There are so many opportunities to slip in a game here and there while you are doing lessons with your child, that you’ll find you and your child will look forward to lessons and homework instead of pushing it off until the last minute.

Rhyming is a good way to test your child’s understanding of beginning reading. Let’s say you have been studying short vowel ‘a’ words such as ‘cat’. Make a game by saying “If we took away the ‘c’ and put a ‘b’ in its place, what would it say?” When your child catches on ask them to try replacing the first letter of ‘cat’ and see if they can make real words. Explain to them that this is rhyming and then challenge them to a competition to see who can make the longest list of rhyming words!

This is only one example of a fun phonics reading game. Stay posted and we’ll discuss more in the future!

At Phonics Reading Pro we’re all about helping you be the best teacher you can be for your child. As you start your quest into teaching initial sounds of letters to your child remember to have a pattern to follow. What I mean by that is, don’t just teach reading lessons indiscriminately. If you taught your child the short vowel sound of “a” one day, you shouldn’t follow it up with teaching “ch” the next day. Kids need to build from more simple lessons to more complex lessons.

With this in mind, lessons should follow a path similar to this: Short vowels first (a,e,i,o,u), followed by long vowels, blends, the ‘er’ family (er, ir, or ur, ear), diphthongs, etc. Confused? Don’t worry! This site will teach you step by step what you need to know to give your child the best phonics reading foundation. Stay posted for more information!