There are many ways nowadays that are used to teach kids how to read and how to spell. Equipping them with the basics would provide them the skill they need in school. People this generation prefer their kids to be educated at a younger age. The short attention span of children is what is considered as the hindrance for learning young. Overcoming this obstacle is easier than most people think. Making the task more entertaining and game like would make children participate easier.

There are aids or tools that can be done to make kids learn to read. Story books with colorful and entertaining graphics would make reading appealing ti children. Being familiarized with the pictures and words familiarizes children on how to read the letters and words. Providing rewards also entices children to read. Once kids learn to read a new word, they are rewarded by their parents or teachers.As children become familiarized with words through reading, they understand how they are spelled. Learning how to spell is second nature once reading has been done. Children would easily associate how a word is pronounced with the letters that are used to spell them. In instances where they experience words that are unfamiliar, they can easily decipher how they are spelled by basing it on how the words are pronounced.

Parents are pushing their children to be the top of their class in schools. Being able to read and spell correctly will definitely provide a child the advantage. Children who learns at a younger age has more retention than those who learns later on. Making a child interested in reading is also an investment that would help the child later on.

Teaching children early on the basics that they need would prepare them and equip them for school. It teaches the child the importance of learning. With educational toys being used now to aid in reading and spelling, teaching a child has become easier. The short attention span of children is complimented by the fun and interesting games that are included with reading. The attention of children are captured by the colorful pictures and pages of books. Through reading, a child is introduced to various different worlds. The information that they get through reading are crucial for their development. Teaching your child how to read and spell will definitely help them in the long run. Learn to read and how to spell using books and toys.

Dennis Brown is a freelance writer and loves to write tips to help kids how to spell as well as learn to read.

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I always say that if you baby can speak, then you can begin to teach your baby to read. I won’t mention any names here, but I think most parents are probably aware of one very popular “reading” program, which is a whole word approach. Using this method, your baby simply learns to memorize the words without actually reading the words. There is no scientific evidence to suggest that teaching your baby to read using the whole word approach is an effective method. In fact, there are large numbers of studies which have consistently stated that teaching children to reading using phonemic awareness is a highly effective method.

Teaching phonemic awareness to children significantly improves their reading more than instruction that lacks any attention to phonemic awareness. – statement made by the National Reading Panel [1]

I do think that the debate on the effectiveness of teach a baby to read using either the whole language or phonics method is settled by the statements made by the National Reading Panel. They reviewed over 1,960 different studies to make their conclusions.

In fact, while my wife was pregnant with our first child, I began doing extensive research on the subject on how to teach my baby to read – after birth, of course. Like most parents I also came across the popular whole word teaching approach being heavily marketed. Seeing the infomercials got me quite excited actually, seeing the babies on TV “reading”. But after watching for awhile longer, it occurred to me that the babies weren’t actually “reading”, but actually “memorizing”, and I thought to myself, how are my children supposed to read newer, and more complicated words as they grow older without an appropriate method of decoding those words? This is where my long and extensive research into phonics and phonemic awareness began.

Fast forward a little over 2.6 years, where I felt comfortable enough with our simple phonemic awareness teaching method, that my wife and I began giving brief 3 to 5 minute lessons to our daughter, aged 2 years and 8 months. Within just a few short weeks, her reading ability (and I mean actual reading ability, not memorization) was astounding, even for me as the parent who gave the reading instructions. Friends and family alike, were simply flabbergasted at what our daughter was capable of reading at just 2 years and 11 months. Please watch the video above, composed of clips of her reading randomly created sentences for reading fun.

I simply can’t imagine this kind of progress possible with the whole word approach – just think of the tens and hundreds of words a young child would have to memorize!

Our son is fast approaching the age where he will soon be able to speak, and we will be using the same simple step-by-step method to teach him to read.

Click here for a simple, step-by-step program that can help your child learn to read and watch a video of a 2 year old child reading

Obediah Marsh
http://ChildrenLearningReading.info

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Just as children have varying rates of intellectual and physical development, they also have variations in the area of mastering various speech sounds. Sometimes well-meaning family members, often parents, think those variations in sound are so cute that they even begin to mispronounce them as the child does. This behavior is not something you will want to emulate, however. Usually the child detects the adult’s mispronunciation and is offended or embarrassed by it, even though he may still be unable to produce it correctly himself.

Studies have concluded that childrens articulation development continually progresses through eight years of age. Not only are there variations within the same gender, but there are differences in boys and girls in their acquisition of certain sounds as well.Ninety percent of five year old girls are able to produce these sounds: “m, p, b, d, n, k, g, t, th (such as this, there) and f”. They are also able to produce the following initial word sounds of “w, h, y, and I” at five years. They can also produce these clusters sometime during their fifth year “tw, kw, pl, bl, kl, gl, fl”.

According to the Iowa-Nebraska Articulation Norms, the “r” sound normative age for both boys and girls is seven years of age. The “th” sound (such as three and thumb) is producible by ninety percent of girls by the age of six, but in boys the normative age for this sound is eight years of age.

Often the concern of parents over their child’s speech is due to the fact that they expect their child’s articulation development to be at the level of another child of equivalent age; a neighbor’s child or even an older sibling. As we have stated here, they are continually developing their articulation through eight years of age, so often there is no cause for concern.

Remember that just as each child has his or her own learning time table, he or she also has a personal time table in the area of speech sound production. This process of learning to produce speech sounds accurately continues until the child is eight years old. Often time and patience are all that is required for your child to develop correct articulation.

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Your Baby Can Read is the best program on the market right now to teach your child how to read. It comes as a learning kit with DVDs and flashcards which reinforce the material in the shows. My father bought the program for my son as a gift and we started using it when he was about nine months old. He would sit and watch the shows, which were about twenty minutes total each in length, and I would watch him from the kitchen while I did dishes. The whole concept behind it is that they show a word on the screen, a voice says the word two times, and then they show a picture or short video clip of the word before moving on to the next word. There are five DVDs in the program and you are instructed to have your baby watch each DVD two times a day for a month before moving on to the next one in the series.When we started the Your Baby Can Read program, I knew it would be difficult for me to commit to showing my son the DVDs twice a day. So we just did them once a day, mostly in the mornings, and occasionally we would watch them before bedtime too. My son loved the songs and kids in the videos. After awhile I began to notice that he would say the word when the image came onto the screen. I was amazed that it was actually working. We kept up with the program and also read regular books to him constantly. He started to develop a love of reading which was evident from the look on his face when I would tell him to pick out a book for us to read together.

Some parents are skeptical about the Your Baby Can Read program, but I highly recommend it if you are looking for a way to give your child an advantage when it comes to reading early.

If you want to buy Your Baby Can Read immediately visit http://hubpages.com/hub/Your-Baby-Can-Read-Reviews

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Teaching a child to read at a young age gives him a priceless and irreplaceable head start in life. Reading is the cornerstone of education and a child’s reading ability will influence his school success dramatically. Learning difficulties, many of which stem from poor reading skills, can damage a school child’s self-esteem and affect his future achievement.

Young children are programmed to learn and they thrive on stimulation. Ten to twenty minutes of reading a day, within an encouraging environment, still leaves plenty of time for play.

Parents concerned that learning to read is too challenging of a task for a pre-schooler, should remember that most children learn to speak by the time they are 3. Learning a language is probably the single most challenging intellectual task any individual can undertake, yet children do it without formal instruction, achieving the fluency that evades most adult language students. It follows that learning to associate letters with sounds is well within a young child’s capability.There is a window of opportunity, in terms of IQ development, which is most open during a child’s early years.

A scientific study, carried out by Dr. Peter Huttenlocher, a paediatric neurologist at the University of Chicago, showed that the number of connectors, called synapses, between the nerve endings in a newborn baby’s brain is similar to the number in the average adult brain. These synapses multiply rapidly during early infancy. By 12-24 months a child’s brain has about 50% more synapses than the average adult brain. Thereafter the synapses which are not in use atrophy. For most of one’s adult life, from age 16, the number remains steady. It begins to drop again as we move into our golden years. Intellectual activity at a young age, such as learning to read, stimulates and preserves these connectors in the brain resulting in a long term beneficial effect on IQ.

In addition to scientific studies, a large number of control group studies have consistently shown that intellectual stimulation at a young age has a positive long-term effect on IQ. The most notable study is probably the Milwaukee Project (Garber, 1988; Garber & Heber, 1981). This study took a group of babies, all of whose mothers had a low IQ, and gave them special training for seven hours a day, five days a week, until they started first grade. By the age of 6 these children had an average IQ 30 points higher than their contemporaries.

The overwhelming conclusion is that early intellectual stimulation can have a positive, long-term effect on your child’s brain development. From birth you should be talking to and explaining things to your baby. Reading to him can be a mutually rewarding activity; a wonderful way of spending quality time with your child. The enjoyment of books and familiarity with the concept of print will pave the way for learning to read later.

If your child is a fast learner you can help him realise his potential by introducing him to the joy of the printed word at an early age. This will lay the foundations for both a high achieving school career and a lifelong love of reading. If your child illustrates early signs of reading difficulties, your efforts may help him diminish such issues before he goes to school.

It can be difficult to teach your own child: emotional issues inevitably arise within any family dynamic. Interactive, self-paced, online programmes for learning to read English are an excellent option. They allow children to repeat new material as many times as they need to, without wearing out the parent’s patience.

Deborah Delin has been teaching English for the last twenty years, working on a one to one basis with children with a wide range of abilities. She has a special interest in dyslexia, learning difficulties and English as a second language (ESL). Deborah is the creator of Strivney English, a free, interactive, online programme for teaching phonics to children and for teaching ELL (English language learners).

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Firstly, I think that it is essential to start with the premise that the most important task of parenting isn’t teaching your baby to read. You may think that by ‘teaching’ your baby to read, she will have an "advantage" over other children when she starts school and will thus go on to be a super achiever with a successful career!

No, your most essential task as a new parent (beyond making sure that your baby is fed, clothed and has clean nappy!) is to ensure that your baby experiences a healthy and secure attachment with her parents and/or caregiver. This gives babies much deeper "advantages" in life than whether they learn to read early, which include greater confidence and self-esteem, less anxiety, better relationships with childhood peers and healthier relationships as adults.

So what has this got to do with reading to my baby?

Reading to your baby provides her with endless opportunities to bond with you while enjoying the sound of your voice and the warmth of your cuddle. Books provide vital one-on-one time for you and your baby, sending her the message that you value interacting with her and want to be with her. Reading with your baby is a solid, important and wonderful thing to do. Explicitly teaching her to read is unnecessary and research shows that it can in fact be detrimental.

Babies thrive on being held and spoken to. From the first months of her life, your baby will be comforted and soothed by hearing your voice, so the books you choose should be books that you enjoy reading. Cuddle your baby as you read; she won’t understand what you are reading, but she will recognize the sounds and rhythm of language and to feel that cuddling with you and reading books is a comforting and enjoyable thing to do.

Are there any benefits beyond bonding?

Yes, there are other benefits to reading which can help your baby to develop a life-long love of reading. Through the sound of your voice and the warmth of your body, your baby will come to think of reading as a pleasurable activity.

On an ‘educational’ level, books provide the perfect opportunity for babies and toddlers to learn about speech patterns, phonics and how to make sounds. Every time you read to your baby, you reinforce basic reading concepts, such as turning pages and following text from left to right. There are numerous studies which confirm that reading to babies not only supports speech and language development, but overall intelligence as well. When you read to your baby, you set the stage for a life-long love of reading.

What books should I read to my baby?

Newborns see things best from about 15-20cm away – or the distance from your face to your baby’s while you’re holding her. So it’s best to select books with high-contrast images (black-and-white illustrations) and patterns, for example stripes, dots, and checkers.

The best books for babies emphasize rhythm, rhyme and repetition, such as nursery rhymes and books with patterned language. Books for babies usually have minimal text and have pictures of other people, especially other babies as they recognize facial features and expressions. Your baby will also enjoy seeing familiar objects like cars and toys, or people doing things that they have had some experience with in their daily routine, such as getting dressed or taking bath.

When reading to your baby, it is important to understand that you are doing two things; helping with language acquisition – which is definitely an important developmental task – and bonding with your baby. You are not teaching them to read, which is a neurological and cognitive task, and one which is not developmentally appropriate for a baby or toddler’s brain.

Don’t get "stressed" about what and when you read to your baby or if other parents are doing it more often or ‘better’, the most fundamental task is to create a healthy and secure attachment with her, and reading with her is just one of the many and varied ways that you can achieve this.

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Bernice Kidd is the Founder and Managing Director of online children’s bookshop 2littlegirls.co.za and direct-selling company 2littlegirls@home.

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