My friend Carrie has a great blog over at Natural Moms Talk Radio and I loved the post that she had on there about encouraging reading in your little ones. You can read her post when you CLICK HERE.

Reading with my kids was my favorite part of the day when my kids were preschoolers. It was great for them and such a relaxing and wonderful time for me. I never actually had to teach my oldest to read – we read together so often when she was little and she’s such a natural lover of words that she started reading on her own really early and has been a big reader ever since.

My youngest loved being read too but because it didn’t come as naturally for her, it took her a little longer to get to the point of reading well herself. Part of that is her “get it done” nature – so she’d just try to speed read through things and guess at words so she could go fast. A few months of concentrated phonics with her and she was fine. Although even now at 14 she prefers to be fast rather than accurate! 🙂

My own tips to add to the ones on Carrie’s blog:

1. Repetition – read the same book with your little ones over and over. You may get tired of it and think they need more variety but when they’re little repetition is how they learn.

2. Don’t limit yourself to books with few words. Start pulling in higher level books early and go through them slowly. Let your little ones draw or play with play dough while you read those books to them. They’ll learn to love words if you use words often and naturally.

3. Be a reader yourself. Talk with your little ones about what you’re reading.

There’s so much more I can say. I’ll post some of our favorite books in another post!