And here is the final mistake from our mini series on the most common things that parents do wrong when introducing the alphabet. The number one most common issue is…..
Mistake #1: Teaching the letter names and not the sounds.
This is the number one mistake that parents make for a good reason – we are so used to our alphabet that we never even think that each letter has a name that is quite different to the sound that it makes. Children, will need to learn both but, it’s more useful to them if they learn the letter sounds first. Why?
Here’s a scenario for you. You’ve taught your child the letters of the alphabet and now you put three letters down in front of your child a ‘d’ an ‘o’ and a ‘g’. If your child knows the letter names he will be able to say them and that’s about as far as you can go. However, if you’ve taught your child the letter sounds you can start to sound the word out together by asking your child to say the letter sounds ‘d-o-g’ saying it together over slightly picking up the pace until ‘dog’ – oh my goodness! You just read a word! Now, watch for the huge smile on your child’s face as she realises that she just read a word. Those are wonderful moments for you to share, and help spark the desire in your child to want to continue to learn to decode all that tricky looking hieroglyphics. Having that desire, overcomes 90% of the challenge in learning to read.