Homeschool Preschool - What You Need To Teach Your Child To Read

Deciding to homeschool preschool your child is not an easy decision for a parent. You want what's best for your child but you are unsure about so many things:

· How do you get started?
· Are you even qualified to teach your child to read?
· Should you follow a pre-designed system or should you manage it your own way?
· Will you have enough time?
· What if you change your mind? Will a stranger have the same passion for teaching your child as you do?

So, let us start at the beginning.

I can quite honestly say that you are the best qualified person to homeschool preschool your child. You have taught them everything they know so far, from brushing their teeth, putting on their clothes and shoes, walking, talking, to using the potty and far too many other things to mention here.

You know your child's strengths and their weaknesses and you (better than anyone else) know how to work around it. Believe me when I say that when you know the how, teaching your child to read and write is a walk in the park compared to some of the other things that you have already taught them. By investing in the time to teach your child to read, and in a method that works easily and effortlessly, the how becomes, pardon the pun, child's play.

The first thing to do is to make the decision to teach your child to read. It may sound rather obvious, but you would be surprised at how many people keep putting such an important thing off until tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow...

Reading will become your child's primary learning skill in life. For this reason starting early and starting right is of paramount importance.

There is no correct age to begin to teach your child to read. Anytime between the ages of 2 to 4 (or earlier or later), is okay. Some parents prefer to start teaching their child to read earlier, others a bit later. The key is simply to start.

However, it has been noted by various researchers that children have a window of opportunity between the ages of 2 and 5 that is best for teaching them various skills like reading, writing and even chess.

The second thing you need to be successful in teaching your child to read is an easy to use, proven method that will bring out and nurture your child's innate ability to learn to read.

I have heard many parents complain that they have been unsuccessful in their efforts to teach their child to read. On further investigation I usually discover that they have no specific method or system and try everything randomly; a little phonics here, a little sight reading there, a few rhymes and a few songs...

This is like trying to learn to drive a car without having proper instruction; a little automatic here, a little stick shift there, maybe some parking and hopefully by the end of the day you'll know how to drive. Not likely.

Luckily, this is very easy to remedy.

Firstly, make sure that you have a system. Prepare a plan of action, set some goals for you and your child and when you are both ready, begin to teach your child to read.

Secondly, put aside some "reading" time for you and your child. Make sure that you teach your child to read at the optimum time when their energy is the highest.

My son for example, has the most energy in the morning so we schedule his reading lessons after breakfast. Other parents choose the afternoons or early evenings. It all depends on when it is convenient for you and when your child feels at their best.

Time is always of the essence in today's busy world, and a lot of parents who wish to homeschool preschool their children are afraid to undertake this important task because they fear it will take up all their time.

Well let me tell you that teaching a child to read is less time consuming than you think. Children have a limited attention span and anyone who tells you to sit for an hour at a time trying to teach your child to read has probably never spent more than 1 minute with a young child.

In order to be successful, the next step is to make sure their lessons are extremely short. Initially each lesson shouldn't be longer than a minute, although you may repeat the lesson a few times per day. All in all your daily total of time spent teaching your child to read shouldn't be longer than 5 minutes.

Thirdly, make sure that your child doesn't become bored with the material that they are reading. My son for example, was not interested in boring subjects like "the cat sat on the mat" or rhymes. When I tried to use this material his eyes would literally glaze over.

However, as soon as I introduced words that he was familiar with, I could not stop him from reading. We used words that he was very familiar with and was totally "into", like alien, troll, Harry Potter, bugs and Kung Fu Panda. Suddenly his interest picked up and so did his reading skills.

In this way, you can intersperse your child's favourite things with the 100 most common words in the English language. By knowing how to read these 100 words your child will be able to read up to 50% of any given book. This sets a good basis for their reading future.

Finally, put all of these steps together into a progressive system that allows one step to easily follow the previous one and without effort your child will be reading their first book in about 30 days.