Reading with children aged 0-3 years

You taught your children the first things they ever knew. Young children watch what adults do and learn by copying them. Reading is no different, but they must want to learn to read. It will help if they can see others enjoying reading themselves. Boys, in particular, need to know that reading is important, and fathers and grandfathers reading to them can help. Seeing adults reading from books, newspapers, recipes or menus will make children want to read for themselves.

Your child will gain a lot from spending time with you talking and listening, reading and writing. Most children will try hard to please you and will want to do well. Best of all, sharing the fun of reading is a great experience for children and adults.

First Steps

• Babies love words and language. They love it when you sing and read to them and tell them stories, poems and rhymes and even small babies can enjoy books. 
• From the start, the time you spend reading with your children will make books and stories come alive. Board books and bath books are often the first books children will come across. They can be treated as toys, but they will help them learn how to handle books, how to turn pages and how to enjoy the shapes, colours and pictures. 
• Children often want to listen to the same story again and again. This is fine, as it builds confidence and familiarity with words, and reinforces that stories are fun. 
• Try to share books together each day, and not just at bedtime. A few minutes of special, quiet time with a book every day is much more valuable than half an hour a week. 
• One of the main ways in which you can help children to become readers is by sharing books and reading aloud to them. They will learn to talk about the story and pictures, join in the parts they know and eventually recognise the words on the page.

Join your local library

No child is too young to join the library. It is free, and borrowing books is free. There are hundreds of brightly coloured books to choose from for readers of all ages, from babies to teenagers.

Most children learn to read by putting letters together that match up with the sounds that they remember hearing. They learn the sounds that letters make. They learn how letters join together to make words.

You can help by doing the following:

• Singing. Rhymes help children see how letters make the same pattern in different words. Play 'odd one out games'. For example, which word is the odd one in a list like cat, mat, dog, sat?
• Play 'I-spy'. It is a great way of showing that every word begins with a letter.
• At the shops, point out the names of different kinds of food as you go past them (for example, apples, bacon, and cheese).
• Encourage your child to choose a book for you to read to them.
• Show your child the way words go from left to right on the page by underlining them with fingers yours first, then theirs.
• Don't keep them guessing for a long time if they can't say a new word help them spell it out slowly using the sounds of the letters and then say it faster together.
• Praise your child when they work out a new word for themselves, or when they go back and put right a word they got wrong the first time