Tips to Quickly Improve Your Child's Reading Skills (With Dolch Words and More)

There are some easy (and fun) ways to help kids who are learning to read improve their readings skills. These are methods that should be used in addition to a reading program and can be used by homeschoolers and children who are learning to read at school. They can also be used by parents who are teaching their toddlers or preschoolers to read. Improving reading skills for children can be fun.

Make sure when you read to a child that you always underline the words with your finger. They will often read along and this can do a lot to improve their reading skills.

Learning Dolch Sight Words or high frequency words can quickly improve a child's reading skills and increase confidence. These 220 words can make up 50% to 75% of the words in early readers. Dolch Sight Words consist largely of nonphonetic words and very common words that can be sounded out phonetically. Some of these high frequency words include because, were, with, he, she, call, cold, can, find and away.

Mrs. Perkins Dolch Words is a free website that provides numerous Dolch word lists, PowerPoint slides, Dolch words stories and activities. The website divides the lists into Pre-Primer, Primer, 1st Grade, 2nd Grade, 3rd Grade and Dolch Nouns.

You can also buy Dolch word DVDs. Dolch Sight Words 1 & 2 are appropriate for all ages. Meet the Sight Words is aimed at preschool age children.

YouTube has many free videos that teach reading. You can easily find phonics songs and high frequency sight words. YouTube has a couple of channels that feature high quality reading videos.

• Hooked on Phonics - This channel features sample videos from the Hooked on Phonics videos. It includes several Kindergarten, first and second grade phonics songs and stories.
• Koomakids - The Koomakids channel on Youtube has numerous videos that are fun and educational for beginning readers. These videos are designed for children who are learning English but are excellent for beginning readers as well.

You can buy phonics CDs, which are a great way to learn and have fun in the car. These CDs usually teach both letter sounds and phonics concepts. such as rhyming and vowels.

Phonics Songs by Kidzup is a downloadable MP3 album that can be burned onto a CD.

Funky Phonics Learn to Read, Vol. 1 and 2 come with both a book and CD.

Phonics Songs That Teach introduces many concepts in phonics, such as silent e, Q and U go together and C and G make two sounds.

The Leapfrog DVDs are excellent teaching tools for beginning readers because they teach phonics in a fun way. Each DVD teaches concepts using stories and songs.

The Letter Factory video teaches the phonetic sounds of each letter. Talking Words Factory teaches how to combine individual phonetic sounds to make three-letter words. Word Caper moves onto advanced phonics concepts such as silent e, long vowel sounds, and blends like sh and ch.

Starfall.com is a free learning website that teaches phonics to kids. It provides games and activities to teach children to read. Starfall is fun and interactive. Kids learn to read while they are having fun online.