1. The world of reading is all around us – books, magazines, signs, street names, road symbols, T.V. captions. Children start to associate symbols with meaning early in life. Young toddlers quickly learn to recognize 'Coca Cola', 'McDonalds' and 'KFC' very early.

2. Incidental or environment 'reading' is a good start for children. While driving in the car point out 'Stop'. 'bus stop', red means stop, green means go, The Warehouse etc. You are developing your Child's Social Sight Vocabulary.

3. Play verbal games with your child eg. 'I spy'. Read the traditional nursery rhymes and jingles. Start to teach your child to recognize and write their name. Draw the letters in the sand. Make them out of playdough.

4. Most importantly develop a positive reading attitude in your child. Do this by modelling yourself reading and by reading to your child, with your child (together) and by your child (their efforts to read to you).

5. When children start school they need to learn three things. They need to identify the letters, know the sound of the letter and know a word that sounds like that. When they come to school if they know where the print is on the page and know that we read from left to right and from top to bottom that is a great help.

6. The first beginning books will be simple and repetitious. Your child will read mainly be rote and memory.

7. Generally, when reading with your child, don't tell them an unknown word.
- encourage them to take risks (what do you think the word may be)
- is it like a word you know
- does that make sense
- what clues are there in the picture that might tell us what the word is
- what sound does it start with
- give plenty of praise for the child's approximated efforts

8. When reading with your child, get them to point to each word with their finger so that they learn one – to – one association between the letters and a word.

9. You can also use a variety of flash card games to help improve their word knowledge eg.
- Word snap
- letter bingo
- word bingo
-memory games