Have you ever seen a four year old reading books? What sort of expectation would you have for a four year old child - to know some alphabet; be able to recognize their own name; know some simple words; or read at a grade 3 level? No, that's not a typo. Very young children can be taught to read years beyond what is expected of them. With some care and effort, a four year old child can be taught to read at a very advanced level.
But how is it possible that a 4 year old child can read at such an advanced level?
This can be achieved by teaching the child to read using a simple, systematic approach to learning to read, with a focus on phonemic awareness. Below, I'd like to share a quick video with you - 1:20 in length. It is a video of our daughter Raine reading at 4 years 2 months old.
Reading is a nightly activity that our entire family sits together for each day. It takes place before sleep time, and helps the kids "cool down". It's something they thoroughly enjoy, and helps them develop a real love of reading. Our older daughter reads her own bedtime stories, while I read for the younger children, who cannot speak yet. The first book she read in the video is "Little Mermaid" - a step 4 book of the "Step Into Reading" series. Step 4 books are intended for children in grades 2 to 3. The second book is "Mercy Watson", a funny and fun to read book for children. She is able to read fluently, with little to no help from us.
Can all children learn to read at a young age?
Of course they can. Any normal child with no learning disabilities can be taught to read at a young age. As long as the parents are willing to spend a few minutes each day teaching them, and keep it up day after day. Why shouldn't children learn to read at a young age? This is a golden opportunity for them to learn one of the most important skills in life. The benefits are numerous, and last a life time.
How to Teach a Five Year Old to Read
Whether your child is 3, 4, 5, or any age, the key to teaching him or her to read is through helping the child develop superb phonemic awareness skills. Helping children learn to read through developing phonemic awareness is a central theme that you'll find on our site here. Why? Because it works. It is absolutely one of the most effective, efficient, and relatively simple methods of teaching a four or five year old to read. It even works to teach two year olds to read.
We keep on talking about phonemic awareness here, but what do we have to back it up? The reason why we recommend teaching phonemic awareness so highly is because there is a large body of scientific research and evidence that supports the teaching of phonemic awareness skills as an effective approach to teaching children to read. More importantly, we have plenty of first hand experience with our own children, and with other parents who used our Children Learning Reading program to teach their children to read.
Take Nobuyuki for example. He's the father of 5 year old Oscar. Oscar had some pronunciations issues, and while his teachers pointed out this issue, they had no clue on how to help Oscar. The books and homework they provided were not structured and were confusing. Nobuyuki sought advice and help from a speech therapist, and was told to wait 6 months for another assessment. For Nobuyuki, this was too long to wait. This is what he had to say about using our Children Learning Reading program:
...
But, I knew that it is a long
time to wait (Oscar will reinforce his own bad habits of saying wrong
sounds while we wait) and I knew that Oscar can say all the sounds if he
practices, because he does not have any mental or physical disabilities.
So, I started to help him every day with his sounds/speech (Even though I
come from Japan originally, I can say most of the sounds in English and my
wife is English). But, all the materials I came across did not have any
step by step and systematic approach for my child to learn reading and
learning sounds, then I found your programme on the internet, which I have
found extremely helpful.
I really like it because it breaks down reading
and decoding sounds into most basic steps, and children learn them step by
step logically. I must admit that I cannot always make it fun for Oscar,
but his reading ability has improved dramatically and his pronunciation
issues almost gone - in the end, speech therapist said actually Oscar does
not need to have any practice session because he can now say all the sounds
correctly. He has also gone up to the highest level in his reading books
which his school (class) gives him for his homework. A few months ago he
was almost at the bottom of his class in his reading but now has gone up so
much.
At the moment, Oscar is still doing lesson 4, Stage 2 on your reading
programme. Because he is already 5, he has learnt some phonics previously
in his school, but was still good to review in your lessons. He still needs
to learn a lot more but I am extremely pleased with his improvement so far,
thanks to your programme. We will continue it, and update you with his
further progress.
Thank you very much and kind regards,
Noby
We receive many these types of success stories from parents who have used our program to teach their children to read. This one was a bit of a surprise for me, particularly because our program was never designed to help correct speech difficulties in young children, and it still is NOT intended to cure speech problems in children. It was a pleasant surprise to hear that our program helped to such a large degree, and helped Oscar go from almost bottom of his class in reading to the top. We truly believe that any parent, as long as they are willing to spend 10 minutes day, can teach their young children to become fluent readers using our simple, step-by-step learning to read program.
