Do children read well enough?

Make learning fun and playful

As a parent, you are your child’s first and most important teacher. You can make a big difference to your child’s reading development through small daily actions.

The key is to make reading and language a natural part of everyday life and to make it fun!

Let’s look at some strategies you can use to promote a love of reading and early literacy skills.

Make reading a cozy time

One of the best ways to spark your child’s interest in books is through reading aloud. Create cozy times by sitting down together, perhaps before bedtime, and read a bedtime story several times a week.

Children love the ritual of bedtime reading, and it strengthens both language and the bond between you.

Through books, the child learns what letters look like, what words sound like, and how sentences are formed.

Make reading aloud interactive by talking about the pictures and the action along the way. This is called dialogic reading and increases the child’s understanding and vocabulary.

When you read about, for example, a cat, ask: “Can you point to the cat? What do you think the cat is doing now?” These little conversations make reading more vivid and engaging.

Parents can do a lot to strengthen their child’s language, including by drawing and writing letters together and playing word and sound games in everyday life. Here, letters are drawn in the Smart Mini app.

Use language in everyday life

It is also important to integrate language into everyday life. Talk to your child about everything.

Point to things around you and put words to them. For example, on a shopping trip, you can point out fruits and vegetables and say their names. You can also play “Who sees something red first?” or “Can you find something that starts with M?” when you go for a walk.

Games like this train the child’s attention to the sounds and letters of the language without it feeling like a task.

Educators and experts emphasize that children learn language best when it feels like a game and not a duty. The more you can associate reading with fun, play and presence, the more positive the child will experience it.

Teach your child the alphabet in a fun way

Children love to play, so why not play with the alphabet? There are many fun letter games for the little ones. You can sing the alphabet song together. Music and rhythm make it easier to remember the order of the letters.

A creative activity is to draw or paint the letters. Give your child crayons or paint, and make a fun activity out of forming letters on paper. You can draw a capital “A” and turn it into a drawing of a tent with a door, or draw freely and see if you can find letters in the things you have drawn.

When your child draws or paints the letters themselves, they get the letters “in their hands” and remember them better than if they just see them in a book or on a screen.

You can also cut letter shapes out of cardboard and decorate them with glitter and stickers, all of which are activities that make the alphabet tangible and exciting.

Teach your child the alphabet in a fun way

Playing with the sounds of language is another good exercise. Try making up funny little rhymes and rhymes together. You can make silly sentences where all words begin with the same letter sound, for example, “Mike making merry music”, and see if the child can continue with the next sentence.

This kind of play strengthens phonological awareness, i.e. the child’s ear for the sounds in words, which is crucial for cracking the reading code later on.

Patience is a virtue, so follow your child’s pace rather than having a specific goal. Every child learns differently, so even if your friend has a different experience than you with their child, it doesn’t mean that their experience will work for you.

It is much more important to create a positive experience around reading. If the child associates books and letters with pleasant times with mom and dad, the motivation to learn will come quite naturally. As a bonus, you as a family will have many good laughs and memories along the learning journey.

Digital learning apps can make reading more fun

We live in a digital age, for better or worse, where tablets and smartphones quickly capture children’s attention.

Too much screen time can worry parents, but digital aids can actually be a valuable supplement to the traditional book, if used correctly.

Experts point out that the right kind of digital learning through apps can strengthen children’s early development.

Quality learning apps for 2-7 year olds can combine play and learning, so that screen time becomes meaningful rather than passive.

Apps with a focus on language and early reading in particular can give children an extra boost because they present letters and words in an interactive and playful way.

Apps play a big part in children’s lives today, but they can also be used actively to learn letters, words and numbers in a way that feels like play.

Learning apps can be powerful teachers

When children use a good learning app, they get immediate feedback and rewards, which increases their joy and motivation. For example, many apps will praise the child or give points when they solve a task correctly.

Such gamification makes the child eager to try again and learn more. At the same time, apps can do something that books cannot: they combine sound, images and interactivity and make learning come alive.

You can make the letters move on the screen, hear them pronounced, and perhaps draw the letter yourself with a finger.

This combination of visual, auditory and practical learning provides a stronger understanding of language.

When a child sees a word on the screen and hears it read aloud at the same time, they naturally learn to connect text with speech, which is the cornerstone of learning language.

The next step is for your child to try writing the letters themselves, which can be illustrated in an animation in an app before they try themselves. In this way, they also strengthen fine motor skills and letter recognition.