Easyread sets the right path to literacy

Dear Parent,

OK. As I understand it, you have a 3 or 4-year-old child who has just started learning the alphabet and perhaps some simple words. But you are a bit worried by the lack of interest or resistance that you see.

The first thing is, I think that doing a bit of early reading is a good idea, so long as it remains light and fun. There is certainly no need to push reading at this age. There is also no need to worry at all.

And never do more than 5-10 minutes of reading exercises in one go.

Games To Play

At this age it is great to practise hearing the sounds in words and to play with word rhymes. One good game for that is "I Spy with My Little Eye". Except you should make one crucial change. Use the first sound of the word rather than the letter. That will make it a very valuable exercise.

You can also "muck around" with the sounds within words. Make silly rhymes like "here is your bed of bread" instead of sandwich, or "its 8 o'clock and time to rock" on the way out the door in the morning. These plays on words will alert your child to the different individual sounds in each word (called phonemes). That will make reading much easier in due course.

Unique Easyread "TrainerText"

The Easyread Foundation Course lasts 10 days and is full of the latest techniques for guiding your child down the right path.

But it is the lessons after the foundation course, which truly make Easyread special.

We use our unique Easyread TrainerText to allow your child to read our stories unaided. It is a bit like the trainer wheels on a learner's bicycle. With TrainerText, your child will be doing all of the reading process, but with the aid of our phonic images above the text. They are just there to help when needed.

Easyread

Easyread is certainly designed to be light and fun, but it progresses very quickly over the first 10 lessons. So I would suggest that your child would probably need to spend at least 2-3 weeks on just this first stage. Once that foundation is created, the lessons will run smoothly from there on.

What I would suggest is that you test our first lesson with your child and see how it goes. It will almost certainly take more than one go at each lesson for a child as young as yours to crack it.

Click Here To Do Easyread Lesson 1 With Your Child

If it goes well, then click here for details on how to sign up for our full course. You can take it as slowly as you like.

- David Morgan
MD, Oxford Learning Solutions