4 Ways To Gauge Your Child’s Early Reading Potential

This post may contain affiliate links. If you click a link and buy something I may receive a commission. This does not change the price you would pay.
4 Ways to Gauge Your Child's Early Reading Potential

Are you thinking of whether your toddler or preschooler is ready to learn reading? There are a few ways for you to assess her early learning potential.

Instead of jumping right into an early reading program with your kid, try to determine your child’s reading readiness which is an important step in ensuring a more successful learning experience.

If she is not ready, start her later. Let her continue to immerse in the world of fun and play, where she can pick up crucial cognitive skills that will go towards letting her learn about how the world works. If she shows signs of reading readiness, go for it!

Below are a few ways for your to check out your child’s reading potential:

Does Your Child Show Interest in the Alphabet?

If you have learning toys that include the alphabet, does your toddler or preschooler express an interest in the letters? If he has already mastered most of his letters, and would look out for letters from everyday items such as printed text on tees and name them, it’s a great indicator that he has an interest in the printed words.

Stimulate and encourage him to learn his letter sounds, and help him to develop his phonemic awareness skill. This skill is the foundation for learning read phonetically later.

2. Does Your Child Sit Through Your Reading?

In order to learn reading, a degree of attention span is needed. When you read your child a story he likes, can he sit through the reading and will he ask for a repeat when you are done reading?

If he enjoys being read to and loves having his favorite stories repeated, it shows he has the attention span to sit through short learning lessons. Let’s remember that a toddler’s attention span is generally short, so even 10 minutes of his focused attention is great!

3. Does Your Child Pretend to Read?

Okay, maybe your toddler isn’t speaking properly yet, but will she take out a book, sit somewhere and pretend to read? She is likely staring at the pictures more than the words. But the act of turning the pages, looking at the pictures, and going through the whole book, and then picking out another book and going through the same motion, all these show signs of reading readiness.

Maybe your child even tries to “read” the story by using her own words, which obviously won’t match with the written words in the storybook, but the act of pretending to read is a clear indicator of an interest in reading and in books.

4. Does Your Child Comprehend the Story?

There is another way to assess your tot’s reading readiness. When you read a story that he is very familiar with, try to stop short before the end of each sentence and see if he can provide the ending word. If he could, it demonstrates his interest and ability to remember the story.

Alternatively, ask questions pertaining to the page you are reading. You can ask him to name things and people and see if he could come up with an answer. You can also ask for the locations of items and people. For example, where are the mittens? Where is the moon? Where is the baby’s belly button? More likely, your child will be pointing to the answer on the page.

All these are good indicators of your young child’s reading readiness. If your kid is ready to start reading, here’s the program I used to teach my son to read. Or you can find out ways to get your preschoolers to read over here.

Leave a Comment

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.