Give your kindergarten child a head start with reading

Parents are often keen to give their children a head start with reading before they get to school. The best things to do are playing little listening games e.g. they think of words or even nonsense words that rhyme with a word you say e.g. what rhymes with 'cat'?.... pat, mat , sat, blat, tat, nat etc etc. or you can play a game where they tell you the SOUND that words start with e.g. ‘cat’ starts with a ‘c’, can you hear the ‘c’ at the beginning of ‘cat’? What does 'pop' start with?'

If you want to really help teach your children some early reading skills, teach the sounds that the letters make, not the names of the letters. While the little song ‘ABCD, EFG, HIJK, LMNOP, QRSTUV, WXY and Z. Now I know my ABCs, next time you can sing with me.’ Or whatever ending you know, sounds cute, it doesn’t help them one iota to read, by sounding out. So teach the letter sounds not the letter names and they’ll be ahead of their peers.