Often times, we spent lots of money on flashcards, DVDs claiming, pricey toys to teach our children letters, recognize sounds and finally read! But taking in to action some simple steps, it makes your child reading journey more fun, exciting and it's good for your budget too. Now, here are the tips:

1. Read up to 20 mins. every night (duration depends on the kid's age and patience) 
2. It's better start with her/his favorite books. I recommend a short rhythmic story. 
3. Put your finger under each word during the reading and let your child see the words.
4. Sounding some of the letters out while you are reading aloud! For example:  h/a/t and then put them together, hat.
5. When teaching letters and the sounds, incorporate as many senses as possible. As mentioned before for younger kids it's good idea to touch the letters, like foaming letters or you can make out of paper.
6. Introduce your child with the author and illustrator of the book and ask questions before, during, and after reading. Not ask too much because they are more interested to know what's happened in the rest of the story. 

May 31, second session of the book club.

For the second session I designed the following creative game for children between 3-8 ages: cross-out words with Dr. Seuss. Hoping that everyone in the audience likes Dr. Seuss, I chose one of my favorite books of his, The Green Eggs and Ham. I created charts with random words from the book. Every participant got a paper with a different chart. While I was reading the book, participants had to find and cross out the words that I was reading.   The winner had to find and cross out all words in the chart. The goal of the game was to make the children quickly recognize words.

You can find a sample working sheet below:

Not	If	Say	Ham	Rain	Eat
Green	Like	Me	Them	With	Sam
On	Do	Eggs	Train	Let	Anywhere

The second game –that turned out to be our favorite—was I spy a letter with the young children. While some of them were super active trying to catch the letters, Jessie, the youngest reader, less than one year old, was carefully listening to the sounds of the letters.