Helping Kindergarteners Read

Helping Kindergarteners Read—5 Tips to Make It Fun

by Mary Follin

​A lot of parents with children ages 4-5 are trying to figure out the best ways of helping kindergarteners read. And it’s no wonder. Kindergarten used to be about coloring, playing, snacks, and naps, but not anymore. Many kindergarteners are expected to be well on their way to reading by the end of the school year.

If your child appears to be lagging behind in his or her reading skills, please don’t worry! Children develop at different ages and stages, and learning will happen exactly when it’s supposed to for your child.

But you can do a few simple things at home to support what your child is learning in school. And if you’re homeschooling, you can incorporate these tips as well. Helping kindergarteners read doesn’t have to be difficult. In fact, it can even be fun!

Helping kindergarteners read can be easy and fun!

5 tips for helping kindergarteners read:

1) Helping kindergarteners read begins with phonemic awareness. Phonemic awareness is the ability to isolate sounds in the spoken word and/or associate them with letters. Here are a few easy ways to incorporate phonemic awareness into your everyday activities:

  • Play with rhyming. Point to your cat and say, “What can I put on my head that  rhymes with ‘cat’?” Then keep going by using each new word to create a new rhyme: “What do I hit a baseball with that rhymes with ‘hat’?” “What can I do yoga on that rhymes with ‘bat’?” etc. 
  • Sing songs that have repetitive patterns and sounds in them. (If you can’t think of any, make them up!) Here are a few examples: Bobby bee is a big boy. Tommy tee shimmies up a tall tree. Silly Sam sat on a slimy snail. Even better, sing songs that star your child doing goofy things that rhyme.
  • Point out sounds in words on signs as you go about your day—traffic signs, billboards, and posters. It only takes a few seconds, so it’s easy to incorporate. Ask your child to be on the lookout for sounds, too. 

2) Let your child play teacher. Instead of helping your child with his or her school lessons, let your child be the teacher, and you be the assistant, standing by to keep the lesson on track. The student? A favorite teddy bear, doll, or even Baby Sister. Anybody who will listen!

3) Listen to rhyming audio books, like “The Fat Cat on the Mat” by Nurit Karlin or “The Bug in the Jug wants a Hug” by Brian P. Cleary. Just listening will be helpful, but you can take it one step further by stopping the audio and repeating the rhymes.

4) Dance! Choose a sound and make up a dance to go with it. What does the sound of the letter ‘b’ sound like in dance? It might look like a bumble bee or a bumbling beast. Get creative! Believe it or not, dancing is great for helping kindergarteners read.

5) Change the tone. Whispering tends to help children listen closely, so try whispering the sounds together. Yelling works, too. Or singing. Or monster voices. Or fairy voices. Whatever captivates your child. 

Try a few of these tips at home, and I think you’ll agree with me, helping kindergarteners read can be a great learning experience for your child—and for you.

Photo Credits: Pexels, Unsplash

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​​Founder and creator of Teach Your Child to Read, Mary Follin was a systems engineer with IBM early in her career. Since then, she has worked for companies in a variety of industries: product development, market research, and other professional services firms. She also wrote Ethyr, winner of the the Moonbeam Children’s Book Award and the Gertrude Warner Book Award. ​Mary currently writes, together with Erika Guerrero, a column titled ASK MOM, an advice column featured every other Friday in Fredericksburg Parent & Family magazine. ASK MOM won a 2021 Parenting Media Association award.