1. Read, read, read to this child. Get them to love books.

2. Sing the ABC’s. Get her to recognize the individual letters by sight.

3. If that is grasped, start teaching the sounds the letters actually make. Short vowel sounds on those vowels first though.

4. Get her to memorize with you something like twinkle, twinkle little star. When she has it, print it out on a big poster size paper. Take her finger and point through it. A child’s first real break into reading is that they have Concept of Word (or COW).

5. Get that older sister to read to her.

Mrs.,

Yes, be grateful that your 5 year old wants to read. Tell her that until she can read on her own, you need to read to her, her sister needs to read to her, and anyone else who WILL will read to her. Tell her she can follow along and learn WHILE she’s being read to. Tell her to “track” the words along while the other person is reading.

Take her to find some books that she’d really like to read on her own. (Right now there’s a sale at Border’s on Step Into Reading books.) Start there — at Level 1. Those books are the easiest, and they use the most simple word forms — including phonics. (Sorry folks, phonics does NOT have a 100% acuracy rate, nor is it a sure-fire way to teach reading.) Make sure she’s pointing to every word so she can see the one-to-one correspondence. When she (and you) think she can read individual words, let her read them, so she’s actually reading, even if it’s only a word or two. Pretty soon, that word or two will become a phrase, then a sentence, and she’ll soon need minimal help.

But keep reading to her. Take her to the library and let her choose her own books, too. Get her her own library card so she has that sense of ownership and pride of being a reader. Mark celebrations with books for her “library,” rather than a trip for ice cream or a burger. If you look carefully, even thrift shops have wonderfully cared for books for nominal prices!

Get a pack of simple word FLASH CARDS or make them up yourself and put them up and show her how it works.

You start with the ALPHABET, letters.

Then simple workds. Single letter words A, I

Double letter words BE AN TO

If you’re REALLY SMART you’ll tell her what part of speech tye can be! Adjectives, Adverbes, Nounds Pronouns, Verbs or Action Words

Then you get into three letter words. See, the, and

Then you get into four letter words.

At that point you can start forming sentences.

Simple setences

See the bird.

See the bird sit.

See the bird fly.

The bird go high in to the sky.

Let her MAKE sentences of the words and then correct her, gentely, when she does wrong and praise her when she does right.

Like I said, you can ALSO get into DIAGRAMING the sentence so she knows what the parts of speech are.

YOu can also get into FON ETICS (Phonetics)

How you PROUNCE words, but I think that’s a little advanced, even for her sister.

Pictures also help.

Pictures of a bird

Pictures of a bird sitting

Pictures of a bird taking off and flying.

Pictures of a bird WAY UP in the sky.

Then she can GRASP the CONCEPTS based on what she already KNOWS from looking.

After a while you can sit and read to her with something like Dr. Seus and let her look at the book and the words.

Let her pick the words out. Show her the words.

Use Dr. Seuss’s books. These are great because they teach the children their sight words, like the, to, in, on, etc. Also, most of the time he has a picture right next to the word, so the young reader learns how to look at the context to help figure out the word.

Not all of his books are great for learning to read; some are bit too challenging because he makes up his own words. I used the following books with my son:

Dr. Seuss’s “ABC”

“I Can Read with My Eyes Shut”

“One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish” (This one is especially great for learning to read).

I started to read these books to my son when he was 3 1/2 , and by the time he entered kindergarten, he new most of his sight words.

Hope this helps!

PHONICS!

Just based on my family’s personal experiences, I cannot overstate how much more effective phonics is than “sight-reading”.

It should be noted that the value of reading was stressed in our home and I think it’s a very important part of developing a child who is not only good at, but also ENJOYS reading. My parents read to all 3 of us kids every single day, starting while we were still in the womb until we were about 3rd grade-ish, at which point WE read to THEM every single night until about 6th grade.

Me and my younger brother both learned to read using phonics and all throughout school we read (and wrote and spelled) significantly above our grade level and excelled in english and foreign language classes.

My youngest brother was taught to sight read. He just graduated from high school and-no kidding-he is barely literate. If I had to guess, I would say he probably reads (and writes and spells) about like an average 4th grader. He was tested several times for dislexia and other learning disorders and is fine. He’s really a bright kid-he does well in other areas of school (except foreign language) and was even easily accepted into a ‘Gifted & Talented Program’. Conversationally, his english language skills are flawless.

I know everyone’s different, blah, blah, blah. BUT, from what I’ve seen, phonics is the way to go, without a doubt!

Well, the method I’ve used is to first have her learn the alphabet, then to pronounce the letters as they are most commonly sounded so she can recognize them on sight. Then you start with simple two and three letter words; “What does this letter sound like? Ok now what does the NEXT letter sound like? Good, now sound them out one right after the other and string them together. Congratulations, you just read the word!”

Then once she learns the basic skill of how to put letters together to form words, you can get her something like “Hooked on Phonics” which is appropriate for her age group (and her sister too!) and a lot of fun.

Why does she have to “start”? Envelope her in reading now. Get books on her level – beginning books that she can talk about even if she can’t read the words… let her read to you even if she isn’t saying all the words. Everywhere she goes she should have her own books in hand. Have books in the car, in the restaurants, in the stores… You need to start reading to her constantly – and not just from a book. Read out loud road sign, bus stop sign, store signs, and the signs in the stores. Let her read the labels in the grocery store as you shop… ask her to help you pick out the tomato soup as you say the “TTTTTT” sound… At home have a “Book Basket” at the dining room table so that she can read as she reads and get reading/alphabet/word placemats at the Teacher’s Supply store. (There are also games and fun workbooks, etc. there, too.) Put labels on objects in your house, “refrigerator”, “wall”, “stove”, etc.

She doesn’t have to wait for Kindergarten to start reading… if you have high expectations, she will have high expectations.

good luck!

Well first you start with the alphabet and tell her what sounds each letter can have.

Then you can begin to teach phonics – groups of letters that have unique sounds. But be careful, I’ve heard kids can get hooked on phonics.

(okay, that last bit is a joke!)

I did this with my son when he was coming up on 1 year old and he was beginning to read and write around 2 or 3.

do what my mom did to my younger sister. YOU sit down with the 5 year old and read the same book over and over for a few weeks. It will get boring, but once she learns what word is where, she will have the book memorized. This trick worked great when she had to read a book in class and she just flipped the pages when she felt like it and the class was amazed at how quick she was able to read.

When reading to her, point out each and every word, and read a book over again until she memorizes what words say what. This helps out alot!

start her off on books at her age, pre-school, i am assumming, and involver her in her older sisters life. Help her learn all the words in one single book, then have her older sister sit down while the younger sister reads to her. Eventually, the older sibling might be able to in turn read a book that she is interested in to her younger sister without the jealousy factor. Be amazed that your kids want to read! that is fantastic. And then have her learn another book and so on, but come back to books so they actually LEARN them and not memorize them