As parents, we walk a tightrope every day. While we want our kids to learn important skills, it's difficult to establish a balance between doing too much and not enough. My mom, who taught a variety of grades, likes to tell me a story about taking me to the zoo when I was a kid. She kept trying to get me to describe the animals and colors, and I requested: "Can't you just stop being a teacher and let me just have fun?" When it feels like drills, it stops being engaging and children don't feel invested in the activity. Essentially, when it becomes a chore, they no longer want to participate.
Reading is one of those obviously necessary parts of early education, but it's hard to know how to best prepare kids. While, yes, drills and flash cards work, as does phonetics, for many children, this type of environment may not be conducive to learning.
Having taught literacy and literacy intervention strategies for many years, I'm confident that encouraging reading is about so much more than flash cards and word games. Here are some simple strategies to get your kid to not only read but love it, too.