Tips for teaching your pre-schooler to read and write.

You can introduce your child to books at any age. Although a baby will not understand the words, they like listening to your voice and even looking at the bright pictures in baby books. Reading with your child is a great bonding exercise, ideal in a bedtime routine and a real rescue from the television on rainy days!

There are four most common methods of helping your child to learn to read:

• Phonics
• Look and say
• Language Experience
• Context support

Whichever method you use you must be consistent and patient; learning takes time. Also remember to be creative as creativity holds a child's attention, and they will learn more when the experience is fun. You may want to combine more than one method of teaching such as phonics and look and say, or phonics and context. Take your time and find out what works for you and your child - every child is different.

Phonics is probably the most widely recognised form of teaching reading. It relies on your child learning the alphabet first and then associating words sounds.

The cat sat on the mat

How now brown cow

The Fox in Socks

This is the flashcard method:

You say a word, get the child to repeat it, then show them a picture of the word just said, with the written word underneath. It is important that you have cards with pictures on as otherwise your child will just try to repeat the sound without realising what it means.

This is matching a picture to a word. If your child draws a picture of a cat you can write cat underneath it. If they draw a park you could write today we went to the park. This is great as a wet day fun - find pictures that your child likes out of magazines and let them stick them in their own book. Then write the word underneath. Your child can go back to the book time and time again and will eventually associate the word with the picture. Over time you can begin to set up phrases and then sentences.

This method ensure that you teach your child by making sure you are choosing books that will keep their interest: if you have a boy who is interested in cars make sure they are car books. If your daughter likes horses ensure that the stories are horse dominated.

There are special books available for this method of teaching and it will ensure that your child's interest is kept up.

However you choose to teach your child to read and write, you are giving them a great start in life. It is important to be patient and most of all to make it fun!