Whether you have a newborn or a story-loving toddler at home, you’ve likely wondered: When do kids learn to read?
The answer is that it doesn’t happen all at once. Long before kids become fluent readers, they start building pre-reading skills, such as interacting with books and breaking words into sounds. Kids are incredible learners, but the work still takes years!
So we’re here to help you encourage them with tools to help them learn to read in fun, uplifting ways.
Key Takeaways
- Learning to read is a core building block that helps your child thrive both in the classroom and in everyday life.
- Most kids become confident readers between the ages of 6 and 7.
- Long before they read full sentences, kids learn by playing with books, spotting words on a page, breaking words into sounds, and matching alphabet letters to their sounds.
- The best way to help your child grow into a reader is to make books a fun, relaxed part of your family’s daily routine.
- Just 15 minutes of reading and playing together every day can help your child learn in a way that doesn’t feel like work.
Table of Contents
Cracking the Reading Code
Reading is one of the most important core skills for helping kids thrive in school and life. Young learners with well-developed Core Skills tend to have greater academic success down the road. So it’s no surprise parents pay so much attention to early reading!
Most children learn to speak, either verbally or in sign, through exposure. This happens naturally and without direct instruction. But the more you speak with your child, the more you impact their receptive and expressive language, which, in turn, can impact their reading.
Unlike speaking, children can’t pick up reading through natural language processes. Instead, we have to teach them how to “crack the code” of written language.
First, children must understand that words are made up of individual sounds (or phonemes) and that each sound is matched to a letter. To crack the reading code, a child must learn to hear sounds in words and to pair them with letters, eventually blending the sounds together to read.
As you might have guessed, learning to read can take time. So, to give you a clearer picture of the overall learning process, here’s a brief look at the pre-reading skills your child will develop (in no particular order) throughout their literacy journey.
Pre-Reading Skills
Phonological Awareness
Phonological awareness is an understanding of sounds in our language and how they relate to each other. This includes segmenting sounds and syllables in words, rhyming, and blending syllables and sounds together to form words.
Alphabet Knowledge
As the name suggests, alphabet knowledge is the ability to both recognize and name the letters of the alphabet.
Print Awareness
Print awareness is a broad term that includes familiarity with different forms of text (books, menus, newspapers, magazines, etc.), understanding print structure, and knowing how to hold these sources of information correctly.
Without print awareness, it’s hard to connect text in a meaningful way and understand the words and phrases on a page.
Phonemic Awareness
Phonemic awareness is the ability to identify and manipulate sounds in a written word.
This skill is often mistaken for phonological awareness. However, the main difference is that phonemic awareness focuses on identifying and manipulating individual sounds, known as phonemes.
While it might take your child a while to master each of the skills above, they are the building blocks of the reading (and writing) journey. With practice and patience, your young learner will be grabbing their favorite book and reading it all by themselves before you know it.
When that will happen depends on several factors and varies from child to child. Let’s take a closer look!
When Do Kids Learn to Read?
When it comes to reading, all kids are different. When your child learns to read and when another child their age learns to read may be a year (or more) apart. That’s OK! It’s all part of kids’ uniqueness.
When your child learns to read may also depend on their pre-reading engagement — in other words, how often they’re exposed to reading.
For example, kids who are read to, who have parents modeling a love of reading, and who have books as part of their everyday life tend to be more excited to learn to read. These children also develop essential pre-literacy skills, such as print awareness.
Another thing to keep in mind is that your child’s reading development is directly impacted by how much they read, especially independently.
Rather than worrying about a precise timeline, it’s better to keep in mind a generalized idea of what milestones your child can reach at different ages.
Let’s take a look at those milestones below.
Reading Milestones by Age
Babies (Under 1 Year Old)
What you might not realize is that your baby’s reading journey begins long before they can even speak. At this stage, it’s not about reading in the conventional sense (i.e., learning the ABCs or sounding out words). Instead, it’s about exploration, connection, and sensory play.
You can jumpstart this exciting process by introducing durable board books and soft fabric books into their daily playtime. These sturdy pages are perfect for tiny hands to grasp and can even withstand (and are safe for) the inevitable chewing phase!
When choosing what to read, pick colorful, high-energy stories with eye-catching illustrations to easily capture your little one’s short attention span. As you read together, listen closely for the coos, gurgles, and enthusiastic babbles your baby makes in response to your voice.
These vocalizations are wonderful signs of bonding and show that they are actively paying attention and learning. By making books a cozy, playful part of your everyday routine, you are successfully building an early, joyful connection to reading right from the very start.
Toddlers (1 to 2 Years Old)
Get ready, because between one and two years old, your toddler’s vocabulary is about to explode!
You can harness all of this wonderful new energy by sharing books that feature bright pictures of their favorite things, whether that means puppies, dump trucks, or tasty snacks. This simple visual association is incredibly powerful for boosting their rapidly growing word bank.
To keep them fully engaged, turn reading time into an interactive game. Try pointing directly at a colorful illustration and asking, “What’s that?” with lots of excitement. They will love showing off what they know!
You can also physically involve them in the story by gently guiding their small hands to help turn the pages, which is fantastic for practicing their fine motor skills.
As you navigate the story, run your finger directly under the words to show them how reading flows from left to right. This simple habit works wonders for building essential print awareness.
Preschool-Aged (3 to 4 Years Old)
Between three and four years old, all the early groundwork you laid will start to pay off in exciting new ways.
If you haven’t already, introduce your little learner to the physical parts of a book. Make it a fun game to help them spot the front cover, the spine, the title, and the author’s name before you even get to the story.
To boost their comprehension, encourage your preschooler to retell simple stories in their own creative words after you finish reading.
You can also build essential phonics skills right at home by playing listening games, clapping out syllables, and singing classic nursery rhymes together. This helps them understand how words are broken down into smaller sounds.
Finally, practice singing the beloved ABC song, naming different letters whenever you spot them on signs, and encouraging them to try writing their very own name. These daily practices are the perfect building blocks for lifelong reading confidence!
Kindergarteners (5 to 6 Years Old)
Formal introduction to “sounding out” or decoding words begins at this age. As part of this work, your child will benefit from learning to hear individual phonemes (single letter sounds) in words — a foundational skill for sounding out words.
Beginning to learn sight words is also important at this age, as sight words don’t always follow regular phonemic patterns (they don’t sound the way they’re spelled).
For ideas on how to incorporate sight word learning into your routine, check out our article 4 Highly Effective and Fun Sight Word Games To Help Your Kids Learn.
To help build your Kindergartener’s reading confidence, prompt them to summarize what happened in the story while you read with them. To make it fun, you can play the silly, forgetful parent!
Asking simple questions about the story helps your child get their brain working and helps you know if they understood the book.
Young Elementary (6 to 7 Years Old)
At this age, children learn more advanced phonics, such as:
- Silent e
- Vowel teams like ai and oa
- Vowels controlled by R to make er, ir, ur, ar, or
- And more.
Your child may begin receiving weekly vocabulary word banks to learn. They will also be exposed to common spelling rules and patterns.
Additionally, when you see your child re-reading their favorite books, know that they’re building strong fluency. This helps them engage more deeply with the texts and investigate words that might be unfamiliar.
To foster a love of reading in your child at this age, you can help them draw conclusions and parallels between things in their life and the things they read.
After all, reading is about making new connections to familiar things that your child knows and loves, as well as exploring unfamiliar things!
Older Elementary (8 to 10 Years Old )
During these years, your child is likely moving away from learning to read — instead, they’re reading to learn.
They may choose to read independently more often. They may read for pleasure or to explore their own interests. They may read to answer questions they have or to identify examples in the world around them.
That being said, even after children are independent readers, it’s a good idea to continue to read aloud. This is an opportunity to share books that are more difficult for them to read on their own.
It can also be good for you to read books that your child reads either on their own or for school and talk about them together, like a book club! This can be a fun way to connect with your child and spend more time together.
Learning to Read with Begin
No matter when your child learns to read, don’t worry! With a little love and support from you, they will get there in their own time. If you’re ever concerned, feel free to reach out to your child’s teacher or another professional.
Begin can help you too.
Try our HOMER app. Just 15 minutes a day has been proven to raise early reading scores by 74%!
Frequently Asked Questions
Is it OK for my 4-year-old to memorize their favorite book and “read” it back to me?
Absolutely! This normal milestone is called “pretend reading,” and it’s actually a major breakthrough. It shows that your child understands how a story is structured. By matching pictures on the page to the plot in their mind, they are building early reading confidence.
Memorizing stories almost always happens right before children start sounding out actual printed words, so celebrate this sweet milestone!
Should I teach my preschooler upper-case or lower-case letters first?
Focus on lower-case letters first. Why? Because lowercase letters make up the vast majority of all written text. Learning lower-case letters first helps your child transition to reading actual sentences much faster.
A great trick is to start with the small letters in their own name. This makes the learning process feel incredibly personal and exciting and helps them build familiarity with the letters they care about most.
What should I do if my child gets frustrated during our reading time?
If reading time starts to feel like a struggle, stop reading right away. Forcing a frustrated child to push through can make reading feel like a chore.
Instead, try shorter, bite-sized sessions spread throughout the day. You can also swap the book for a storytelling game using their favorite toys to keep things light, playful, and stress-free.
Is it OK for me to read the exact same book to them every single night?
It’s more than OK. It’s highly encouraged! Frequent repetition builds comfort and security, even if you get tired of the same pages.
Rereading is a great way for your child to master rare vocabulary and learn to predict what happens next. Spotting these patterns in language builds essential reading readiness skills that will serve them for life.
