Help Your Child Read At Home: Reading Tips for Parents
What can I do at home to help my child improve their reading?
Let’s talk about some super simple strategies and easy reading tips for parents that you can implement today to help your child read at home!
Whether you're homeschooling or supplementing your child's main reading instruction at school, as a parent, you have a huge ability to use the time you have in ways that bolster your child's confidence, skills, and love of reading. Here are a few high-impact reading tips for parents that are aimed. at fostering connection and building skill mastery.
Not quite sure what's at the root of your child's reading difficulties? Need help figuring out where exactly to begin or what to do next?
Take this 3-minute quiz to see what's got them stuck and receive personalized feedback on what next steps to take!
Read Together Every Day
The easiest and most obvious tip, but definitely one of the most important actions we can take, is to read together with your child each day. If you build this into your daily routine, and you give your kids the freedom to choose books that are interesting and engaging to them, it's is a great way to foster connection between you and your child while working on reading skills.
It bears saying that this does NOT have to occur before bedtime if that's not what works for your family. For example, we do our daily reading in the car, and my son reads to us each morning on our commute to school. Do what works for you and your kids, and remember the goal is to bond over a good book, not to torture each other over the text!
Help Your Child Read At Home With Games
I love to recommend using games to reinforce skills, especially the foundational ones. The great thing is that almost anything can be made into a game, especially for younger readers! Phonics games such as, “I’m think of something starting with the sound /b/” where your child has to guess words beginning with that sound until they figure out what you picked are perfect ways to get high-impact practice within a low-pressure framework.
Other game ideas include:
scavenger hunts in your home or community to find things beginning or ending with certain sounds
matching or memory games with blends, prefixes, suffixes, or high-frequency words
sensory play or exploration setups paired with a literacy component
word games like Scrabble, Boggle, or Bananagrams
adding a competitive or racing component to an activity to increase the excitement or novelty factor.
Games keep your reading interactions light, fun, and low-pressure, which is perfect for fostering a positive relationship while you help your child read at home.
Looking for hands-on, fun, and engaging learning materials that can support literacy instruction? Check out these easy-to-adapt reusable resources that are perfect for early learners or elementary-aged kids in need of remediation!
Patience is a Virtue
The third parent reading tip is for us as adults. And fair warning, it's a tough one. We need to keep our patience when we work with our kids and we have to try to remain as supportive as we can.
Now let's be real. Keeping your cool while unsuccessfully going over the same skill ten thousand times, or trying to stay upbeat while your child refuses to even try to complete an assignment is SO hard.
We totally get triggered by our kids and their own frustrations, but we really need to try to keep things positive and celebrate their successes more often than we harp on fixing their mistakes if we want them to have a joy-filled relationship with literacy.
Think about the 5:1 rule... five compliments for every one correction. This rule helps me pull back when all I see are things that need correcting, and to choose my corrections with intention and restraint so that I can ensure the strength of our connection and keep the momentum going in a positive direction.
Short and Sweet
To help you keep your patience, the fourth tip to help your struggling reader at home is to keep it short and sweet. At home, ten to fifteen minutes at a time of literacy games, work, practice, reading, etc. is plenty for a child who is struggling, at any age.
If reading feels like a lengthy and agonizing experience for your child, they will not want to do it! So, keep it quick and fun and try to aim for high-interest activities to keep the frustration at bay.
Home Is Where The Books Are
Finally, make your home a haven for literacy by intentionally creating a print-rich environment. This means you need books, magazines, newspapers, and other actual print materials in your home, accessible for kids to see you reading and for them to pick up and read. Don't forget that audio books count, too! Some kids really thrive by listening to books, so making audio players available or using audio book apps for your children at home is a great way to keep reading accessible.
For visual readers, digital print is great, but it doesn’t invite a reader the same way that actual print does. So, get a library card or go to the used book store in your local library and start building or add to your existing collection of actual print materials. You’ll quickly see how soon your child will pick up a book when it’s just laying around and not being forced on them!
Remember, no matter what the cause of your child’s struggle is, you can get to the bottom of it, and your child can meet with success when the right interventions are in place! Your child is lucky to have you working toward solutions for their struggles, and with intention and dedication, they will get back on the right track before you know it!
Ready to get to the root of your child's reading difficulties and receive personalized recommendations on where to go next?
Take this 3-minute quiz to see what's got them stuck and receive personalized feedback on what next steps to take!
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