We have finished learning lower case letters along with their corresponding sounds and written formations.  While we will continue to practice both letter recognition and formation regularly, we have also been spending time using letters and sounds to make and read words.  Some of the ways we have been practicing these skills include playing guess my word (also known as hangman),  reading words with the same ending, changing just the beginning sound to make a new word or sometimes even a nonsense word (map, cap, tap, sap, jap, vap), and using letter tiles to build words by breaking them down into their individual sounds.  For all of these activities right now we are focusing on three letter words with short vowel sounds.

We have also started reading emergent books with predictable patterns.  Some strategies we have been using to help us read are pointing to the words and making sure we say just one word for each written word, paying particular attention to the first letter and sound of a given word (while the English language has many inconsistencies, most often the first letter of a word corresponds to the first sound), recognizing familiar sight words, and using the pictures to make sense of the text.

While actually reading words is a critical component for reading development, it is just one small piece and children tend to master this skill at individual paces.  I often think of the acquisition of reading as very similar to the acquisition of walking: certain components need to be in place for children to acquire these skills.  As long as these components are in place, children will learn to walk and also learn to read but they might do this at very different paces. 

As children are learning to read, it is important for them to focus on their own growth and not compare themselves to other children.  This is a point I try to revisit often and I find that children easily relate to the comparison to walking.   Some children may have used the support of furniture or a steady hand to practice moving on two feet, while others just stood up one day and took their first independent steps almost instantly. Likewise, some children will spend a lot of time practicing reading before actually reading many words, while others will seem to start reading overnight.  Today they are all adept walkers and it would be hard to determine who learned to walk first based on their current walking skills.  Similarly, they will all become adept readers and eventually it will be impossible to tell how fast each child learned to read.

Finally, while we spend a significant amount of time working on reading words at school (and if children are interested it is certainly helpful to practice at home as well), perhaps the most important thing parents can do to support reading development is read aloud to your children and foster a love of books.