ElizabethB mentioned phonics. I highly recommend parents use this to teach their own children to read. I taught all 3 of mine before school.
I fell into it by accident. I had the 5 letters of my daughter’s name in large, wooden cutouts in her toy box. At 15-16mos. she asked me, “What’s dis?” I told her and the next day she remembered it, and learned the others.
I then put magnetic letters of the alphabet on the fridge. She soon learned each one. Then learned their sounds. By age 2 1/2 she was reading almost anything. My boys were not as fast. Usually boys are slower. And being slower does NOT mean they are any less bright. What one child learns in one area, another child is learning at a faster rate in another. (One friend’s child didn’t walk until 17mos. – he graduated from Stanford. His mind was too busy to take the time to move his legs..)
Use what works for each child. Discover how each one learns. A friend I was visiting took me to school with her – she taught 3rd graders. It was time to take the spelling test. She told me the boy who had earlier entertained the class with a lively story, would sit out the test. He’d never passed one. Shocked, I asked if I could work with him.
Having an imagination, I told him to close his eyes and to get a good picture of that word in his mind. Together we thought of images that each letter of each word might look like. I remember the simplest one, the word “eye” – the “e’s” were eyes and the “y” was a nose. He got all words right on the test.
Now you know my two successes in life! It was a joy to work with each one.
