It's not what you do for your children....

....but what you do with your children that counts.

This quote comes from 101 ways to get your child to read by Patience Thomson (a Barrington Stoke Ltd Quick Read) 2009 which I picked up at the library.  

Cousin Lucy is reading already, and I know Jamie is going to be behind her for a while.   However, the book offers advise for starting to read with him, and I think so far we aren't doing too badly.

As the book says; the first thing a child must know about when he is learning to read are the shapes and sounds of all the letters used in the English language.  Then he can put them together and find out what each word says.

Every letter has a different shape.  To read, we have to tell one letter from another; d and o and g do not look the same.

Letter have different sounds.  You need to know what sounds letters make to work out what each letter in a word is saying d-o-g.

To remember them better, your child may like to give the letters nicknames like 'sammy snake' for S.

The book suggests separating the vowels and consonants, but this is something that Jamie should do once he starts school.  For the time being, I think we will just concentrate on getting him to identify the letters.  The book also points out that words are not just in books - they are everywhere.  Jamie has already realised this and asks 'what does that say' more than once a day!

The book also suggests children write their own book with stories, jokes, pictures in.  This might be a project for us when we are off in the summer.  I am sure I have an empty scrapbook lying around somewhere......