Kindergarten • Language Arts • Preschool

How to Teach Reading to Pre-k and Kindergarten Children

July 30, 2022
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by Beth Gorden

One of the most important skills for kids to learn is how to read! Although it can seem daunting, you can teach your child to read! Here are lots of resources to guide you step-by-step as you teach reading to pre-k, kindergarten, first grade, and 2nd graders too. From learning your alphabet letters to the sounds each letter a to z makes, sticky vowels to blending to make words, plus lots more. We have lots of free printable phonics worksheets, reading games, and spelling activities to help your students read. Ready to learn how to teach reading? Here you go!

One of the most important skills for kids to learn is how to read! Although it can seem daunting, you can teach your child to read! Here are lots of resources to guide you step-by-step as you teach reading to pre-k, kindergarten, first grade, and 2nd graders too. From learning your alphabet letters to the sounds each letter a to z makes, sticky vowels to blending to make words, plus lots more. We have lots of free printable phonics worksheets, reading games, and spelling activities to help your students read. Ready to learn how to teach reading? Here you go!

How to Teach Reading

First, when should your child start reading? There are no absolutes for when kids are ready to read. Every child is unique, and that’s okay! As a general rule of thumb experts say most children learn to read by age 6 or 7. Some learner earlier or later, but by the most part children in first or second grade are reading. Studies have also shown that pushing a child to read earlier isn’t necessarily beneficial as they tend to even out in later grades. The most important think is to encourage a love of reading  and provide opportunities for reading readiness.

Pre reading skills

Learning to read starts way before kids are actually ready to read. It starts with toddlers and preschoolers learning to recognize our 26 letters, discovering that each letter makes a different sound, understaning tha tsounds make words, enjoying hearing stories, and wanting to read. Read to your chidlren, 30 minutes a day. Not only is this a wonderful bonding routine, but it teaches the importance of reading. They will also learn that books have to be right side up, how we turn pages, develop vocabulary, and learn about a wide variety of topics. All these will set the foundation for reading.

Pre reading skills

Reading Readiness

  1. Seeing Words – First kids need to understand that letters form words which can be read to leave a message. as you read signs in your community, point them out to kids. Reading books helps kids learn that letters and words for stories that are interesting to read. This is when we start to teach children to recognize and spell their names. This helps them to see th eimportance. (Here are some fun name activities for kids)  ceiving emails and personalized ads. There is also an understanding of the order of reading as they watch people read from left to right, and cover to cover.
  2. Wanting to Read – After years of having signs, books, and birthday cards read to them, they will want to read things for themselves. Fostering a desire to read begins with giving them lots of interactions with letters, words, and stories while making it fun.
  3. Reading Comprehension – As kids listen to stories, it is important that they understand what they are hearing. In olders students we use book reports to acess reading comprehension, but for younger pre-k students we ask questions. As your kids what happened in the story? Who was the main character? Why was the ___ upset? This will help teach kids to listen for important information and make them more active listeners.
  4. ABCs – Kids start be recognizing that certain symbols are letters while others are nubmers, shapes, etc. They will learn the 26 letters A-Z. Children will start to notice each letter has a capital and lowercase version. Knowing the difference between uppercase and lower case letters is important.
  5. Letters Make Sounds – The next important step for a student to learn to read is to understand that each letter makes a particular sound. In it’s most basic concept – when sounds combine together, letters make words. We teach the different beginning sounds, ending sounds, middle sounds, rhyming patterns, blends, etc using phoinics. Mastering phonological awareness means children are able to blend sounds together, decode them and manipulate them. (phoenemic awareness activities kindergarten)

Work on reading readiness by reading to your child daily

Read to Kids

Make reading a habbit and a special time your children look forward to. Cuddle up on the couch with at least 3 books and spend 30 minutes enjoying a good story. I suggest reading a wide variety of books, always making it fun and low stress!

Learn Your Letters

Teaching kids the upper and lowercase letters doesn’t have to be hard! There are so  many fun and simple ways to help kids to learn their abc:

After children know their letters, they need to know the sounds they make to combine the letters to make words. This is how to teach reading with phonics printable activities

Letter Sounds

Pre-k and Kindegarten children are probabaly already familiar with letter sounds as they have seen them on alphabet cards and in alphabet picture cards. But slow down and make sure they know them well. We love using the leap frog letter factory movie for cementing in this concept!

Vowel Activities

Teach kids that some letters are special and are the glue that holds the words together – these letters are called vowels. English vowels are a, e, i, o, u, and sometimes y. Each of these letters have a long sound where they say their name and a short sound. This leap frog talking words factory video was helpful for kids learning their vowels as were these activities:

These free printable Beginning Sound Games are a great way to work on learning initial sounds while playing a fun game. Use this beginning sounds games as part of a beginning sound, alphabet or literacy study or for extra work. Simply print the letter sound games for preschool, pre-k, kindergarten, and first grade students and you are ready to play and learn! Help children work on recognizing initial sounds with these beginning sounds worksheets. This free printable allows preschool, pre-k, and kindergarten students to practice phonics beginning sounds with a fun do a dot printable. This initial sounds worksheet has children find and dab the letters that match the initial sound of the cute clipart pictured. Children will love that they can use bingo dauber markers to practice phonemic awareness and phonics skills! Simply print the beginning sounds worksheets pdf and you are ready to play and learn with a phonics activity.   Looking for a fun abc printable to help kids learn their alphabet letters, learn vocabulary, and work on phonemic awareness. These hugely popular alphabet hats are a great way to introduce students to the letters in the alphabet from A to Z. There is a different hat to make for each letter - perfect to go with a letter of the week program for toddlers, preschoolers, pre k, and kindergartners. Kids will love making this simple alphabet book with these cut and paste alphabet worksheets. Children will print pdf file and print the alphabet printables, cut out the alphabet picture clipart at and paste it on the correct alpahbet page. This alphabet cut and paste ese Alphabet Cut & Paste activity is perfect for preschool, pre-k, kindergarten and first grade students to work on learning their letters and the sounds they make.  THis cut and paste letter worksheets not only help learn letters and enrich their vocabulary, but help practice fine motor skills too.

Kindergarten Phonics

Now it’s time to start making words by putting together the letter sounds. Start by just adding the missing beginning sound, middle sound, or ending sound.

Whether you're teaching preschool, pre k, kindergarten, or first graders, you're bound to be needing tons of ideas for teaching CVC words. We have lots of  creative, and free printable CVC Words Activities to keep kids engaged and having fun learning!  We've included hands-on many cvc word activity ideas, free CVC words worksheets, and CVC words games so as to provide educational activities and learning opportunities all year round!

CVC Word Activities

Next up try simple CVC or CVCe words, rhyming words, and word families. These are all great for building a sense of how words are formed, how to sound out words, and gives your students a way to decode written language. See CVC Words Activities  Plus don’t mis this nonsense words worksheets

Help kids learn to read by exploring and playing with word families! These super cute, fun, engaging, and free word family activities are a great way for young children to start off with their literacy journey. These word families activities are perfect for preschool, pre-k, kindergarten, and first grade students! We have free printable word family games that are sure to get your child excited about learning!

Word Family Activities

Phonics word families are groups of words that have similar letter patterns. By learning just one pattern your child can learn many words at the same time. We have lots of great resources for kids to practice reading and spelling with word family sets! See Word Family Activities!

Rhyming Words for Kindergarten

Sight Words

There are some words in the English language that don’t follow the rules – they are called rule breakers. It is extrememely helpful to memorize these words as they make up about 50% of the text that students read. These are words such as I, the, and, are, am, two, etc. There is a set for of suggested list for prek through grade 2. You can see the sight words list here and lots of fun sight words game and activities

Do your kids love playing with play dough? I know mine do. That is one reason why I love incorporating playdough activities using playdoh mats into other aspects of our learning. So as we were learning what are the parts of a book I decided I'd make playdough mats to learn the parts of a book for kids. Simply print the parts of a book worksheet and set out some playdough to teach preschool, pre-k, kindergarten, first grade, 2nd grade, and 3rd graders the basic parts of a book. Help kids get excited about reading with this super cute, free printable reading log template. With this  as they track how many books they've read, or how many hours they've read with this super cute bookshelf reading log. This reading log printable is perfect for pre-k, kindergarten, first grade, 2nd grade, 3rd grade, 4th grade, 5th grade, and 6th grade students. Simply print book log printable pdf file with and you are ready to encourage kids to read! Looking for a kindergarten reading list to get your child excited to read? We have pulled together over 50 fun-to-read stories in a handy kindergarten book list. The books are arranged by book level plus there is a free printable kindergarten level books pdf to take to the library! This is a great resource to help get early readers excited about reading kindergarten reading books! Simply print reading books for kindergarten free printable and you are ready to get your kindergartners reading! Looking for the best kindergarten books to read aloud, this book list is filled with great books you Kindergarteners will love to hear?  Just print the pdf file with the free printable kindergarten read alouds library book list to take with you to the library.

Kindergarten Reading

Continuing to read good quality books with complex story lines and good vocabulary is essential for developing not only reading and writing skills, but proper use of the English language. Here are some resources to help you out

 

One of the most important skills for kids to learn is how to read! Although it can seem daunting, you can teach your child to read! Here are lots of resources to guide you step-by-step as you teach reading to pre-k, kindergarten, first grade, and 2nd graders too. From learning your alphabet letters to the sounds each letter a to z makes, sticky vowels to blending to make words, plus lots more. We have lots of free printable phonics worksheets, reading games, and spelling activities to help your students read. Ready to learn how to teach reading? Here you go!

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About the author

Beth Gorden

Beth Gorden is the creative multi-tasking creator of 123 Homeschool 4 Me. As a busy homeschooling mother of six, she strives to create hands-on learning activities and worksheets that kids will love to make learning FUN! She has created over 1 million pages of printables to help teach kids ABCs, science, English grammar, history, math, and so much more! Beth is also the creator of 2 additional sites with even more educational activities and FREE printables - www.kindergartenworksheetsandgames.com and www.preschoolplayandlearn.com

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