If your child does not yet read for himself, either because he is too young or because he has a reading difficulty, you may worry that he will never learn at home. Relax! Keep reading to him and eventually he will want to read for himself. For suggestions and reviews of books to read aloud to children of all ages, look at my page of books to read aloud

If your child has a condition like dyslexia then he will find it more difficult, but there are compensations. For more information about dyslexia, and other learning difficulties, look at one of these sites: Gift of Dyslexia, Learning disabilities, British Dyslexia Organisation.

Make sure reading is fun

Never do anything that makes reading into a chore; don’t force your child to try books which are beyond his level. Some children learn to read intuitively at a young age, others will need help with phonics in order to make a good start.

The modern Ladybird reading scheme is an enjoyable series of simple books with carefully graded vocabularly and stories designed to appeal to young children. Schemes used in schools usually focus on key words and gradually take the child on through carefully graded levels. But you may prefer to use simple books from the library for early reading sessions. If you enjoy Ladybird books, there's a useful site with details of most, old and new, and many to swap or buy second-hand: try Ladybird Flyaway home for a good selection of second-hand copies, Cheesypeas Ladybird Books for comprehensive listings and details of what to look out for at car boot sales or charity shops, or the Ladybird web site for currently available books.

Introducing phonics

To introduce phonics, you could try making large coloured cards with letters on (lowercase is best to start with) or use the magnetic fridge letters. Make simple words like cat and dog, then play a game where you choose a different sound to make new words - like hat and hog. Young children love nonsense words, so show them imaginary words as well - like zat and zog! Our children enjoyed Dr Seuss books such as 'Fox in Socks' or 'The Cat in the hat' which are full of real and nonsense words to encourage playing around with words and phonics. If you don’t feel confident about phonic rules and your child doesn’t seem to be learning intuitively, have a look at the Letterland series of books which give all the letters characters (Annie Apple, Bouncing Ball, Clever Cat) etc and create stories for each sound and phonic blend. This scheme is used successfully in many British infants schools.

As your child begins to sound out words, or recognise a good selection of ‘key’ words, make sure he has some very easy-to-read books with interesting stories, and read them with him. Encourage him to read a page, but help him out immediately when he is stuck. Don’t force him to sound out a word or worry about it, but help him to guess from context or from the initial sounds, and tell him the word if he gets worried. You want him to enjoy the story and want to read more, not to be proficient immediately. He may want to read the same book over and over, or he may want you to read alternate pages. It doesn’t matter! So long as he is trying to read, and enjoying it, he will continue.

There are many web sites devoted to childrens' books and characters; an Internet search for a particular title or author is likely to produce a variety of these. We particularly liked the Dr Seuss site, and a delightful 'Alice' web site, with the text of 'Alice in Wonderland' displayed on screen, and drawings by school children.

Reading for enjoyment

Once your children read with some confidence, you probably need do little more other than tell them words which they don’t know, and help them find out the meanings of words they don’t understand. Provide plenty of fiction and non-fiction, give free choice from the library, if appropriate, and continue reading to them way beyond the time when they are fluent, to start them off on new series and to keep their vocabulary and understanding ahead of their actual reading ability.

Don’t worry if they seem to want a steady diet of Enid Blyton, or even simply comics; so long as they associate reading with enjoyment, they will continue to read and will attempt more difficult books in their own time.

For more detailed information about how children learn to read, and how to encourage their skills, see my page on teaching reading.

A new and interesting package encouraging parents to help children with reading at home, in a holistic way, can be found at the Learn4Life site.

For a useful site about children's literature, and a listing of all UK public libraries, some with online facilities or projects, look at the Children's Literature web guide and UK Public Libraries site.

More about English in home education:

English/Speaking and listening
Writing
Grammar, spelling and the secondary years
General English resources