The Best Pre-Reading Skills to Develop in Your Child
Is your child getting ready to start reading? Although there is no one right way to teach a child to read, there are certain activities to build pre-reading skills in young children that can help set them up for success. When you work on building these skills with your child, you will see faster growth.
As a parent, you can work on some pre-reading skills at home to boost your child's skills and abilities before they start reading. Here are four pre-reading skills to develop in your child.
Develop Awareness of Sounds
The ability to hear, identify, and manipulate individual sounds in spoken language is a critical pre-reading skill because it helps children understand that words are made up of smaller units of sound, which is key to being able to read. This is a skill called phonemic awareness.
There are lots of great ways to develop phonemic awareness. You can start by talking to your child about the sounds they hear in words, or you might play games where you make rhymes together.
Knowledge of Letter Names
It's important for children to have a good understanding of letters before they start trying to read because it helps them understand the letters they see and how they connect to sounds.
You can start by teaching your child the names and shapes of all 26 letters. You can also talk about the sounds that each word makes, perhaps making games with each of these letters.
Improve Vocabulary
There are lots of great ways to help children build their vocabularies. You can start by talking to them about new words and concepts, reading aloud to them, and having them tell you about the things they're interested in.
You can also play word games and puzzles together, and encourage them to keep a dictionary or thesaurus handy when they're reading. A variety of games are meant to improve vocabulary in young children before they begin reading.
Develop Comprehension & Critical Thinking Skills
Children need to be able to understand what they read. You can help your child develop critical thinking and comprehension by asking your child to predict what is going to happen or by asking questions about what you just read to your child.
Conclusion
Developing these pre-reading skills will help your child be successful when they start reading. And the best part is, they're all skills that you can start working on right now, even if your child isn't quite ready to start reading yet.