Many parents want to help their child learn to read and spell before they start school but don’t really know where to start- they would like a simple step by step guide. Here I give parents a good start – we call this Level 1- and its suitable for children as soon as they start to talk.

I would also like to see pre-school and prep aged children develop an understanding of the written code as early as possible bearing in mind their individual capabilities. I therefore encourage people to focus much more on creating opportunities for children based around their language development rather than age- and will be discussing in depth ways in which we can help children develop language skills, in another article.

Forget the end result – ie that children will love to read and be excellent at spelling and writing – let’s focus on giving children opportunities to understand concepts. If children are able to create the sound ‘buh’ then they are capable of learning the symbol that is used to represent that sound ie the letter ‘b’. If they can look at a picture that represents something- eg a house- they can see a letter and learn it is used to represent a sound- make sure you do this with sounds they can create with their mouths. Generally ‘muh’ ‘buh’ etc.’