Four steps for teaching your Kindergartener to read
**This blog contains affiliate links. All products linked are ones I 100% use and love. If you decide to make a purchase using one of my links, I'll make a small commission at no additional cost to you. These commissions help me keep the blog running** When it comes to homeschooling teaching your child to read is one of the most important early milestones. Reading opens so many doors for children to enrich learning, and become more independent learners and free thinkers.
I’ve successful taught both my 10 and 8 year old how to read independently by the beginning of first grade and I’m currently working towards that same goal with my 5 year old.
In this blog post I’m going to give you the 4 simple steps for teaching your kindergartner how to read. These are the exact steps I’ve used with all three of my own children, and are based on brain science.
These steps do not require a ton of prep work for you, or boring worksheets for your kids. In. fact the majority of these steps are play based, meaning your child is going to have fun while reading.
Steps for teaching your kindergartener how to read
This is the exact method that I’ve used to teach all of my children how to read in kindergarten. I didn’t buy expensive curriculums, the only workbooks we use for reading practice is These right here. Explode the code is the only workbooks I recommend your kindergartener do while learning to read. Explode the code is going to introduce phonics skills to your child in a simple systematic way. The great thing about these books is that after a few lessons your child will be able to do the majority of the work independently, even if they aren’t reading yet!
Phonics mastery is a must. In order for a child to truly grasp reading they need to master the basics of phonics. Reading is simply the process of decoding symbols aka letters on a page. The phonics rules are the decoding key. If you’re like me when I first started to teach my now ten year old to read, you don’t really remember the exact phonics rules anymore. You simply know how to read. Thankfully there are some amazing resources to help you re learn the phonics rules so that you can teach them to your children.
If you take nothing else from this blog post, let it be this. The number one resource I recommend for teaching your children to read is “Secret Stories” by Katie Garner. This book makes both teaching and learning how to decode letters and all their different phonemes ( sounds) in a fun, simple and most importantly memorable way. I would even venture to say its been my all time favorite homeschooling resource in the last 7 years. It’s that good.
Master the basics first. Before you dive into teaching your kindergartener to the phonics rules, make sure they can confidently identify all of their letters both upper and lower case as well as the sounds each letter makes. The best way to practice this is through games. My three favorite games for practicing letter and sound recognition is ABC GO Fish , ABC Memory and Boggle Jr. You can play these games as often as your child wishes, the more he/she plays the quicker they’ll be ready to move onto the next step in reading.
Tip: When you play these games make sure your child is saying the letter name and sound each time, repetition is super important for memorizing their letters and letter sounds.
It’s time to start reading! Once your child has mastered their letters and letter sounds, it’s time to start reading simple words. The best place to start is with CVC words or constant vowel constant words. I have found that starting with phonics based earlier readers like the Dash into Learning series is the absolute best way to build upon phonics mastery in a systematic way. My children were all able to move on the early chapter books after completing the Dash into Learning 3 part series.
** I Do Not recommend using the step / leveled reader books you can find at target / barns and noble. These books do not follow a systematic approach an often assume children have sight word memorization. Save these books for when children have a better grasp of the different phonics rules like blending, magic E etc. they’re great for building confidence and as a transition to early chapter books but not for actually teaching children to read.
The key to success! Understanding the phonics rules can be really tricky for young children and as adults we often don’t remember why letter combinations do what they do, which can make teaching your children to read super frustrating. My key to success and the reason I found teaching my three children to read so easy is combining Secret Stories with Dash into Learning. You do this by actively using secret stories as a reference guide when reading the dash into learning books, or really any book. As soon as your child comes upon a phonics rule they don’t know yet, stop and read the secret story that goes along with it. This is called guided reading. Pretty soon you and your children will have all the secret phonics stories memorized and you can quickly prompt them while reading helping to quickly the phonics rule. Before you know it they’ve mastered the phonics rules and are confidently reading!
Helpful Resources:
Grab my free CVC word download to help your child master sounding out CVC words with simple + fun games.
