Teaching your child to read is giving them a gift for years and the earlier you start the better.  Talk to your baby - some parents begin by talking to their bumps and continuing when baby arrives.  Teach your baby rhymes and songs.  Read to him using age appropriate books.  Sure he may hold the book upside down but he will love the time spent with the people he idolises - his parents.

We all know that children love to pretend they are grown ups.  If they come from a household where parents read a lot, they are more likely to want to read than if the television is the one and only source of entertainment.

Some age appropriate television programs can be helpful in teaching young children their sounds etc.  Sesame Street was wonderful for this.  It is never a good idea to leave  a child watching TV all day long.  TV by it's nature is ever changing which only encourages children to believe that life is like this as well.  They can get bored very easily when they realise it isn't.

Play games with your young children - don't worry about making the games too educational.  Having fun is what being a child is all about.  If you can add learning into these fun times you deserve the gold star award for parenting.

Virtually every child can learn to read, some just take longers than others.  This is not a race to the finish line and you should never compare a child to his siblings or worse his peers.  All children are individuals.     Kids learn best when adults gently encourage them and praise their efforts.  They will quickly turn off if they think that you are pushing them into doing something.  Praise your child and don't expect too much from them - they are probably not going to read Tolstoy at the age of four - mine were five!  (only joking!).

Teachers the world over will tell you that they are sick and tired of the latest evidence that this particular method of teaching works better than that one.  No one method is the best as every good teacher knows.  Kids are unique so need individual help with their reading.  A "you will all learn it this way" edict from on high will not help any child who is struggling to read.  The brighter kids will learn to read regardless of which method is used to teach them.

The Alphabet Approach 

This is the method the old Christian Brothers and other religious orders used to learn to read. The order recited the same prayers over and over again learning off huge pieces of text at a time.  They then gradually began to recognise similar words that appeared over and over again eventually learning the letter that made up these words.  As a system you can see why it did not really inspire enthusiasm for reading.

The Phonic Approach

This is based on the sounds of the individual letters rather than a word.  The problem with phonics is that children are expected to learn these sounds which can make reading very tedious.  The meaning of the story can be destroyed whilst we concentrate on the "cat sat on the mat"!

Phonics has a place but it might not be at the very beginning when kids start to read.  Adults don't read word for word but sweep across whole sentences.  But combining phonics and whole word approach can work very well.  Competence in phonics is required but is often missed in schools.

Whole Word Approach

This method explains why most children will learn/recognise elephant before they learn smaller words.  Kids learn via visualisation and learn words and sentences easily when they mean something to them.   Flash cards used properly will help your child build a huge vocabulary very quickly.   If you combine the flash cards with a book, your child will be able to read a book which will do wonders for his self confidence.  

The disadvantages of the whole word approach is that it can become very boring. You use the same word throughout the book often in a contrived way.   You also need to learn the actual sounds of the words at some point.

Real Book Approach

I like this approach but I can understand why teachers with a class of 30 5 year olds have an issue with it. Basically the idea is that children will learn to read if they can chose their own books from ordinary children's books rather than school books.  Parents could get quite confused as sometimes their child brings home a book which is obviously too advanced for them yet the next week they have one that is too easy.  

The idea is that if a child is interested in something they will be more enthuasicatic about learning.  Combine small class numbers and a fantastic teacher and it makes for a very good system of learning.