how to teach Your 3 Year Old To Read
Here at my Montessori-inspired daycare and preschool, I teach 3 year olds to read before they go off to their respective elementary schools at 4 or 5 years old.
Once the foundation of knowing letters and their sounds is set, reading can happen in as soon as a week!
It’s incredible and exciting to see!
Should My 3 Year Old Be Reading?
Sure, if you want them to!
Is it a requirement to get into school? No.
Are you a better or worse mom if you do/don’t teach them to read? Of course not.
Do early readers stay ahead? Research says, not necessarily.
Here is my thought on it – if you want to and are able, you can give your child the gift of reading before they go to school.
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When Do Children Learn To Read?
Depending on where a child is born and raised, they will typically learn to read between ages 5 and 7 years old.
5 Simple tips to help teach your 3 year old to read
1. Sing Songs, Play Games & Use Visuals To Teach The ABCs
Yes! You’ll actually find that there is nothing fancy that I do! I just focus on each step of their mastery and then move on to the next step, utilizing play and silliness, mostly!
Singing the good ol’ ABCs is perfect! Do it regularly and often. Songs are exciting, get your child moving and thinking, making them a wonderful way to express ideas and help them learn.
Use your 1:1 play time, time in the car driving together, bath time or cuddle time before bed as an opportunity to sing the ABCs.
Playing games that expose your toddler to letters is wonderful learning for them. Repeated exposure to such games can help them retain the information. Puzzles and letter matching games are great for this!
You can let them free play with the puzzle and choose to do ‘guided’ play sometimes, where you pass them the letter pieces and name them off as you do. You could even make up a silly song about the letters as you pass them to your child.
Keep an eye out for a mix of alphabet toddler toys that have both upper case and lower case letters. Many teachers will tell you that when children get to school, many of them are only able to identify uppercase letters. So, be sure to have toys with a mix of both, so your toddler can learn both.
Using visuals is an excellent way to have letters around them all the time. You can get some cute learning wall art to hang in your child’s play area. You can even view anything with letters as a ‘visual’, by bringing your toddler’s attention to it. For example, you could point out the “A” on the amazon box or the “M” on your mama sweater. Learning can happen at any time, in most any setting!
2. Practice Letter Sounds
Typically I start to have them practice letter sounds while they are playing, whether it is free play or a focused/guided activity together.
For example, if they are playing in the little kitchen, I might say “ok! time to practice our letter sounds! You find the fruit that makes the sound! Ready? This is the ‘A’ and it sounds like aaaaah aaaaaah aaaaaaa, apple! Grab the apple! That word starts with the sound aaaaaa, for ‘A’! Say aaaaa!”
Another example of how I do it is, I use a dry erase pen to write letters on some magnet tiles and get a couple pieces of white construction paper to write the same letters on. Then, I invite them to match the letters, and as they go, I say the letter sounds – “A sounds like aaaah, say aaaaah. Aaaaaaapple. D sounds like duh duh duh duh dada! You’re learning your letter sounds!”
If we are driving and I see a stop sign or we stop at a light, I might say, “sssssstop sssstop ssss, what letter makes the ssssss sound? S! Oh, and what is this? A light! Lllllll Llllll Llll, that’s the ‘L’ sounds Lllll for Lllllight Llllight!” I don’t wait for them to answer when we are just starting out, I answer and keep it playful. With practice, they will be able to answer soon!
3. Mix up the letters
I like to use the magnet tiles, like I mentioned, and a felt board for most of my letter sound activities. It keeps things organized and simple for me, instead of having to come up with a bunch of new ideas PLUS toddlers like a good routine. And the felt board is always a hit!
How I use it is: I place some words, without their first letter on the board OR I show them pictures of real animals on my phone and ask them to find the letter that makes that sound and go place it on the felt board.
I have them sit, classroom-style, on the floor facing the felt board and I sit next to them, to help as needed.
I mix up all the letters and lay out 4 letters on the floor for them to choose from. You can choose to lay out 2-4 letters, and build up to more.
We keep it small to start to not overwhelm them.
Once you notice your toddler rocking this step, you can bump up the difficulty level a little (by doing the next step in #4 below!)
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4. Put 2 letters together & Practice their sound
You can use the magnet tiles and the felt board for this too! You can also write them out together on a dry erase board, paper or toddler sketch pad, and say the sounds together.
I like to use visuals as often as possible, so I will bring my phone out or a big book of animals/images so I can show them an image that corresponds with the 2 letters I am writing on the sketch pad.
For example, I would write ‘Du’ on the sketch pad and then show them a duck. Then I’d say, “these letters in duck make the ‘duuuuh duhhhh’ sound. Let’s try it, ‘duuuuuhhh duhhhh duhhhhhck! Great!”
Then I’d show them a ball and write “Ba” on the board and sound it out together.
Then I’d show them a snake and write “Sn” on the board and sound it out together.
To encourage them, I’d say things like “those are the sounds! You are learning the sounds of words so you can read them! Excellent babe! You are learning so much! And soon you will read just like mommy and daddy!”
5. Put 3+ Letters Together and Start Sounding out Words In Books!
From here, the progression is fast! Once they start to get a hang of multiple letter sounds together, you can just add more and more letters to words and they will keep sounding them out, blending them together to make the word.
Have them make the letter sounds 3 times, then ‘smash’ all the sounds together, as I call it. I usually clap my hands and say ‘smash!’ at the same time, the toddlers laugh, love it and do it too!
So for example, you have written cat. Have them say, “cccccc aaaaaa ttttttt, ccccc aaaa ttttt, ccccc aaaa ttttt. Now let’s smash it together! ccaatttt. Cat! Do you hear it? Cat! This word is cat!”
You can repeat the sounds until they hear it. Soon, they will get used to listening for the word as they sound the letters out.
Next is introducing their very own special books! What a pro! They can sounds out words and reeeeead! So we want to move their mastery to books!
Bobs books are wonderful for beginning readers because they use alliteration and start with 1-2 words and build up from there. They have simple pictures and are light and thin.
Conclusion
You can teach your 3 year old to read and the process is truly nothing hard or fancy! It is more about making time for it, having a routine around it so skills can compound, exercising patience because their learning can feel slow, and practicing together so they can get better and better!
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