I have been advertising myself as a preschool reading tutor, and not surprisingly I am not getting many people who understand why a preschool reading tutor is necessary. There is a big movement to let kids be little, and misconstrued research floating through the Facebook sphere saying that it makes no difference when children learn to read. I could not disagree more. I am sure that all of these people have good intentions and are doing what they think is best for their children. So in the name of doing what’s best for our children, and still letting them be little,  I would like to introduce some developmental reading concepts that most people are probably unaware of and why it is important to learn in preschool.

Pre-Reading Skills: Best developed between 3-5 years old

In layman's terms, Phonemic Awareness is helping children learn to identify the sounds they hear through speech. This is best done by singling out the first or last sound of a word. For instance, saying /c/ cat or box /x/. Phonemic awareness is the first step towards reading and is best started around 3 years old. This skill can easily be developed through your day with little effort. Simply saying “Do you want to go to the /p/ park” or “Time to get into the /c/ car” starts to bring awareness that words are made up of sounds.

The second pre-reading skill is called Blending.  I teach blending using little figures that I know children love to touch and play with. For example, I have a miniature: hat, mop, pig, dog, pan, bus, sun, bed, and so on. I will line up the figures and point to one and say “This is a /d/o/g/ dog” and go through the whole line that way. After doing this a few times I will ask them “Can you show me the /b/u/s/ please? The child in order to point to the right figurine needs to blend the sounds together to understand the word. If they are having a tough time doing this I say the sounds quickly so the word is more obvious. To make it harder the sounds are said slower with more of a pause in between. When children can blend words easily they are ready for the next step, which is segmenting.

It is easiest to think of segmenting as the opposite of blending. Segmenting is taking a word and pulling the sounds a part, whereas blending is putting the sounds together. (I would like to clarify that at this point letters are still not being used). Using the same figurines as before put an item on a piece of paper that has spaces indicating how many sounds there are in a word. For example, “cat” has three letters so I would have 3 blank spaces on the paper. To show the child what to do you would do the lesson a few times putting your finger on each space as you say /c/a/t/. This lesson is direct preparation for reading because it is teaching them to sound out a word.

The next skill comes easily if the previous three have been practiced for a while. It is called Alphabetic Principle. Most people understand this skill but it is important to point out common mistakes. Alphabetic principle is teaching that each letter in the alphabet has a sound. This is where most people start in the process of reading but if a child’s hearing/brain connection has not been trained to hear individual sounds a child will have a difficult time correctly remembering and identifying a letter with a sound.

What makes this process even more difficult is that most people teach the letter names instead of, or before, the letter sounds. This sets children up for failure because they do not know in what situation to use the sound and in what situation to use the letter name. The letter names are not used to read! And so it is best to teach children to recognize letters by their sound. When introducing a letter to a child you should show them the letter and say “This is /a/. Can you think of a word that starts with the /a/ sound?”. If they can’t, you give examples like: apple, ax, alligator, and so on.

There are many more steps to the road of reading but these four pre-reading skills are the foundation for reading. Without these skills learning to read is very difficult, which is why most people think that preschoolers are too young to read. This brings me to my last point, which is about sensitive periods. A sensitive period is a window of time in which a skill is learned best and with the least difficulty.  Most of us recognize that milestones fall within a general time frame for infants and toddlers. These have been well established by the medical community. We know that the time frame for a baby to walk is generally between 9 months and 15 months. We do not expect a child to start walking at 3 years old because the sensitive period for walking is between 9 months and 15 months.

Reading has a sensitive period and it is between 3 years old and 6 years old. This does not mean I expect 3 year olds to read. There are many pre-reading skills and learning milestones that children need to accomplish before reading can take place. But if you start phonemic awareness at 5,6,7 years old you are at the end of the sensitive period and the window of opportunity for easy acquisition of the skill is closing with years worth of skills that still need to be mastered. Like most things, some children are more acclimated to reading while others need more help. Working on the pre-reading skills can help a child so much that they may never know that reading could have been a challenge for them.

Reading is not an instinct. It is not naturally acquired without instruction. So it is important that we provide the proper instruction at the proper time. In Montessori, we are trained to observe sensitive periods to respect the child’s inner world and not force them into a lesson they are not ready for. Forcing a reading lesson on a child who is not ready will not be fruitful for the learning process, and yet Montessorians have found time and again that we can guide preschoolers through the reading process because they are in a sensitive period. We also understand there is a developmental process to reading and rather than jumping to letters and words we start at the very beginning and work our way up.

I am a huge advocate of childhood play and learning through movement. These lessons done for five to ten minutes a day or just a few times a week can have a massive impact on your child’s reading development, which I do not believe takes away any childhood magic. If you strongly feel that preschoolers should not be learning to read please contact me. I would love to further discuss the topic. And if now you understand why I provide tutoring services for preschoolers and are interested in a session please send me a message. Happy reading!