Here's how to start

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We teach our children from a very early age the sound that animals make. We point at a dog on the street and tell our children that it goes woof. We see another dog later, a completely different breed of dog and we still tell our child that the sound a dog makes is woof. We ask the child to repeat it. We make it into a game. The child remembers, and when we next point to a dog, the child happily tells us the sound a dog makes.

Letters are No Different!

As children can easily recognise different breeds of dogs and associate them with sound, they can also easily recognise upper and lower case letters as being one and the same thing and also give them a phonic value.

is a big letter a which makes the sound aah

is a small letter a which also makes the sound aah

This is not complicated and alleviates the need to teach children only a phonic alphabet and then have them relearn the alphabet with the proper names of the letters a few years later; something which is done at present and causes a lot of confusion to many primary school children.

The most important aspect of teaching a child to read is to make it fun, go at the child’s pace of learning. and stop as soon as a child becomes bored. Quick frequent sessions are better than long drawn out tutorials where a child will quickly lose interest.

It is easy to make a game out of learning. Remember a young child has no frame of reference for schooling at this age and it is only the preconception of adults that places limits on a child's learning potential.

The video clip

The video clip located on the home page emphasises these following points:

1 Choose a relaxed environment.

2 Introduce Flash Cards casually.

3 Start with only a few letters at a time

4 Use upper case and lower case letters

5 Once a child is familiar with the names of the letters, introduce the phonic sounds. For example big letter B makes the sound “ba" and little letter b makes the sound “ba”

6 Make sure lots of praise is given and encourage the child to take pride in their achievements.

7 Reward attempts at letters that are similar in appearance, such as K and X.  Reassure the child that they are doing well and let them know that their confusion is understandable. Don’t be afraid to tell the child they have given a wrong answer, but do always encourage them to have another go.

8 Stop as soon as it is clear the child has lost interest. It is not possible to force a child to learn at an early age. You can only feed their natural curiosity and desire to learn as and when they give you your attention.

Letter Recognition