The only thing I can say about early reading, is that children are usually happier for it, and it helps us parents keep our sanity. If my children did not learn to read early, then I would have had to read and explain everything all day!
I know that would be true in our case, so I don't have to read the same books, which he memorized, over and over again.
How do you teach a toddler to read?
Well, based on my own experience here?
Much the same way you teach anything ELSE to your children.
Now, not all kids
are eager to read very young, and for some kids, print materials and being read to are as much about emotional needs as intellectual ones. For my own child, that was not true; as soon as she COULD read, she definitely didn't have much desire for us to read aloud to her ever again. For her, the books were the point-- so we just handed her the key and she wanted to engage on her own terms.
BEFORE that, she wasn't just a kid that wanted to be read the same board books seven or eight times each night. No. She wanted to be read DIFFERENT books-- all day, every day. Relentlessly. I would literally be hoarse from reading to her, and she still wanted more.
So her learning to read was a tremendous relief to both of us-- it was like watching a crow fledge.
HOW did we do that? Roughly the same way that elementary teachers 'do' it, I'd say.
1. print-rich environments, and magnetic letters on the fridge. DD learned all of the phonemes and letter names first. This was very natural and fun. No drill. Just answering her questions and helping her with pronunciation.
2. Later, point-and-enunciate-by-phoneme with phonetically controlled books. Bob books or similar. "C-AAAA-T."
That's it. DD also watched
Between the Lions for a while. But only because she LIKED it. At some point, she started reading words to US during reading aloud, and at that point, we stopped 'teaching' and let her do it her way.
I don't know if this is enough for kids that aren't GT, but I know that it was plenty for my DD. HTH.
