How To Teach a Two-Year-Old to Read

Tangible Items Needed:

Wooden alphabet puzzle (or another tactile alphabet appealing to toddlers)

The Ordinary Parent's Guide to Teaching Reading

Magnetic dry erase board with marker and eraser

Magnetic letters (capital and lower case)

Blank note cards (to make letter cards and word cards)

Markers

Bob Books, Set 1 (optional)

Intangible Items Needed:

10-15 minutes of daily lesson time

Patience

Enthusiasm

An excited, precocious* toddler**
 
*"Precocious" defined loosely. Definitive characteristics of a precocious child: he breathes, eats, sleeps, bathrooms without extensive adult assistance. He seems excited about life, i.e. running laps around the living room, jumping on the bed, watching leaves blow on trees, listening to stories.

**A toddler is, by definition, a tangible creation. Yet I didn't want to get into some existential discussion of the differences between body and soul, so the toddler falls here under intangible. Because--let's face it--he's a lot harder to define and explain than, say, a marker. 

Directions:

1. First, start reading to the child at birth (or shortly thereafter. Like within the first week). One story before bed. One story at naptime(s). One story at 10:37. One story at whenever-you-trip-over-the-stuffed-bear-due-to-sleep-deprivation. Etcetera. Optional, but highly recommended as you wade through the post-partum fog--it'll snap you out of it, I promise!: Read The Well-Trained Mind.  



2. Stock the child's room, living room, kitchen, bathroom with books. Lots of books. Quality books, preferably older ones. Caldecott medal winners, Mother Goose, Beatrix Potter, A Child's Garden Book of Verse, Dr. Seuss. Encourage the child to read all the time. It helps if you limit TV. To less than half an hour a day (preferably none). And stock up on tape. Enthusiasm can be destructive (purposeful or unintentional).

3. Around the child's second birthday, get an wooden alphabet puzzle or some other tactile alphabet for the child to explore. Our P learned the alphabet in three weeks--because he kept bugging us to do his "letter puzzle" twenty times a day (one thing a parent can never say "no" to!). All kids are different, yada, yada, yada--I know all kids are not like P. Just remember that brain synapses are about 1000 times more numerous in the first three years of life than at any other time, so memorization is not only a novelty (re: FUN!) for little kids, it's highly possible.

4. With markers and cards, make letter cards. We made two sets; the first was for fun, making sure P knew both capital and lower case letters. ...

5. The second letter card set followed the directions from The Ordinary Parent's Guide to Teaching Reading, which is an awesome resource for any parent to use. It contains phonetics lessons broken down in very small pieces, with dialogue for the parent/teacher. It also contains additional materials to use, like a dry-erase board and magnetic letters. With the letter lessons, we sometimes combined two at once; we sometimes now take three days for one lesson. We might stop for a month or two if P's not picking up on putting letters together to read words. But he's reading sat, bat, cat, hat, bed, Ted, Nan (words found in The Bob Books)... and he'll be three in June.

YOUR KID CAN DO IT, TOO.