Your baby CAN read

You don't need fancy videos or flash cards. I am here to tell you, your baby can read. When you read that animal sound book that your child loves so much (you know, the one with the fuzzy lamb and smooth cow) for the thousandth time and they chime in with their sweet little, "Moo!" They are reading along. Sure they have memorized it. That is part of reading. Knowing the letters and sounds will come later. Enjoying a book with you and being encouraged to be a part of the process is the first step.

Later, when your child tells you they "don't know how" to read, pull this book out again. Or try the good old Blue Hat, Green Hat or No, David. Remind them that they DO know how to read. If they get stuck on a word, they can use the pictures to help them. They can read McDonald's and STOP, after all. (Tell me, parents, how many of the words in this blog have you had to sound out, for goodness sake.)

This is a good time, if you haven't already, to begin playing with letters and sounds. A great time for this is during a boring car ride. My husband likes to play the No Parking sign game with the kids. Do you know how many of those Ps there are on any given street? That game gets old fast, but the kids never seem to tire of it. I like to have the kids read the next word in a story, especially short words like "me" or "see," and fill in the rhyming words in a rhyming book. They get practice using context clues and using beginning letters as clues. And I get to tell them what great readers they are!

I have so much to say about learning to read, I could go on and on. And I hope to in this blog. I will share some stories of things we have done at my house. My son learned to read at 3 and my daughter is now reading at 4. I'm not much for drill and practice. My son wouldn't have any of it even if I was. We just read and read and read and then we play with silly sounding words on our way to the library. So come along with me for some inspiration. I have enough love for teaching kids to read that some of it is bound to rub off!