| | | | Ways to Encourage Your Child’s Ability to Read |
By Susan M. Keenan
Teaching your child to read does not have to be a challenge nor a dreaded chore. In fact, you can teach your child to recognize certain words before he or she has even managed to learn to spell or how to say the alphabet.
One of the most creative and fun ways to teach your child sight recognition of a few words is with a box of crayons and a color by number coloring book. As soon as your child is capable of holding a crayon and shows an interest in learning how to color, the time is right.
The coloring books are usually available in varying degrees of difficulty with the more difficult ones including smaller pictures and more colors. Take the time to sit down and color the first page together.
First, explain to your child that the numbers on the page correspond to specific colors. Show your child the place on the page where it lists each color with its corresponding number. Read each word one at a time stopping long enough in between for your child to trace the word with his or her finger as she repeats the color.
Have your child take the correct crayons that you will need out of the crayon box. Next, show your child the part of the crayon label that also lists the name of the color. For this task, it is very important that you only use the basic primary colors that are included in the coloring book.
Now, pick up one of the crayons. Ask your child what color it is. Show your child the word for that color on the coloring page. Use the crayon to color part of the word on the page. Have your child color the remainder of the word. Repeat this with each of the colors that are listed on the page.
Explain to your child how the coloring book works. Make sure she understands that the numbers in the picture match up to the numbers in the color legend. Show her that she can use the coloring on the words to determine which color corresponds to each number. Take turns picking up a crayon and coloring something on the page.
Once you are finished, prepare the next page for coloring in the same way. If you prefer, you can label several pages in the same manner so that your child will be able to continue coloring while you go about your chores.
Depending upon your child’s age, curiosity, and desire to learn, you will soon be able to move on to the next stage of the learning game. Instead of doing the marking of colors for your child, have her look at the word on the crayon wrapper to match it with the word for the color in the coloring book.
This time, have your child look at the printed word for the color on the crayon label. Have her attempt to match the word with one of the words on the coloring page. Direct your child to color over the word on the page. Pretty soon, your child will be doing this on her own. In time, she won’t even need to color over the words, but instead, she will simply recognize the words.
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