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The summer before my son went to kindergarten, I attempted to introduce a sight word game via flashcards that I found on the internet. My son refused to even participate and I was convinced he would not learn how to read. He's intelligent, there is no doubt about that, but I was sure he had a learning disability....I think the statistics are that 1 in 4 kids is dyslexic.

So off he went to kindergarten. I held my breath, preparing for a call from the literacy coordinator and it never came. It simply took a proper literacy program and dedicated teachers. It began with the sight words and introduction of rules, like the bossy r and e placed at the end of a word making the vowels say their name. Those kinds of formal rules made it click for my son. He can sound out words (including made up words) which is a marker that I was concerned about. I check his comprehension by asking questions as he is reading. The fact is, though, while I know how to read, I do not know how to teach a child to read, so I had to back off to let the professionals do their jobs.

The school supplemented his reading with books of the appropriate level and I just continued reading aloud to him at night. The biggest challenge now is finding appropriate material, so we've enlisted the help of the librarians in town plus an online reading program for content.

I didn't really know where to start with my son (who is in kindergarten). We signed up for a weekend class thing over the summer that we got a flyer for from my son's preschool that lasted about 6 weeks and the parents actually stayed on site for the lessons. I think it was more helpful to me than him because it gave me a better sense of how to approach reading lessons. My program was offered through this organization and it looks like they have programs all over: http://readingprograms.org/FIND-A-PROGRAM. Also, we bought a large pack of sight words from Amazon that come with card rings and we add a new word every few days to the ring and do them during dinner. If he does a good job with the words, he gets to have a dessert. He loves it and asks to do his sight words every night.

I also vote let it go. I take a Janet Lansbury approach to thinking about these things: http://www.janetlansbury.com/2010/03/a-baby-ready-for-kindergarten-college-and-life/ -- that blog post is more geared toward infants/toddlers but I think the advice holds very well for kindergarten.

There have been articles written about the huge shift in recent years towards pushing "kindergarten-readiness" for kids, which is a coded way of saying that kids should know how to read before entering kindergarten. I'm on board with the argument Lansbury makes, which is that kindergarten is for learning socialization skills and that learning to read will come in its own time. There's no need for parents to feel this pressure to send their kids to school already knowing how to read.

I think this blog post has some good tips for teaching a kiddo how to read and steps to progress through. http://marriageconfessions.com/2016/09/07/teaching-your-preschooler-to-read/

I'll say that my kindergartener learned most of his letter sounds in 4k and is just now starting to be able to sound out simple words. He do it in the car as a game sometimes and focus on groups of words. (what does C-A-T spell? What does B-A-T spell...) But he doesn't have a huge attention span for it and I don't push it. At school they are learning site words and memorizing short, repetitive books.

I may be in the minority here but I think that where she is is totally developmentally appropriate and what I would do is continue to read to her and wait it out a bit. Just because she can recognize some sight words doesn't mean she is ready to start sounding out words and doing that sort of thing. I think the important thing at that age is preparing the foundation, and she will pick up phonics quickly when she enters more structured education. For reference my newly five year old is in TK (missed bday cutoff for regular K) and they are working on letter sounds on their own and in the context of words, as well as expanding sight words, and next year in regular K they will be able to sound out words. Now given she has a little extra time than most, she is well able to keep up with that curriculum and when we discussed further skills at parent teacher conference her teacher just recommended staying the course, and that if she wasn't picking up what I was telling her, she was telling me she wasn't quite ready, and that's no problem.

Sorry for the rambling answer!

@lawbee11: follow the child, my friend. Your girl sounds like fun and ready to start learning to read! Out of curiosity, I would casually ask her to read me a story one day just to see what she might do.

Since night time stories are a frustrating time and she sounds like she could benefit from immediate gratification, I'd pick out a book you read that has a word used repeatedly and doesn't have a lot of text on each page. We have a book called "Babies and Dogs," so I'd pick the word "dogs." I'd write "dogs" on an index card and then act all excited about teaching her how to read. I'd sound out the word, pausing with my finger under each letter. Have her do the same. Then read the book and tell her she can watch for the word and read it herself! You can model this, prompt her by giving her a playful poke, etc. Then you have opened the door for phonics. You could go back to the card, trace the letter "d" and talk about other words that start with the sound we make when we see this letter.

I love all of the ideas @Charm54: recommended. I have a lot of other ideas, but don't want to overwhelm. Something that is also fun for a child eager to read is to have them tell you a simple story and for you to write it all down. Then you can read their story back to them. Maybe even fold pages over and write it like a book. Kids captivated by the idea of print really love this.

@Charm54: @Happygal: These are all such great ideas! When we go to the library or pediatrician’s office or anywhere with books that LO hasn’t read before she loves to grab a book and make up a story based on what’s going on in the pictures on the pages. She also loves to grab blank paper and write squiggly lines and pictures across the page and tell me the story as she “writes” it. I guess I’ve been hesitant to do anything out of fear that it would cause her to lose interest in books and reading if I pushed too hard, but it sounds like it would really help and I know she would enjoy these activities. I had no idea where to even begin but this gives me a lot to work with

@lawbee11: that's incredible that she has such a natural inclination to do those things! That will go such a long way when she starts school.

There's some research out that we have been pushing kids towards conventional reading (reading the words) too soon and basically shoving them through reading levels at the expense of fostering enjoyment and developing comprehension. I have been really inspired by the work of Matt Glover (he has a fantastic book called I Am Reading for any educators here who are interested). He encourages parents and teachers not to de-emphasize decoding, but really elevate the meaning making process and work hard towards build strong reading identities.

I am loving having a 4 year old at home, she gets to be my guinea pig with everything I've been researching and reading

@Charm54: Good article!
Also yEs to rhyming, making stories and books with patterns.