In a recent international survey of Grade 4 and 5 childrens’ reading ability, South Africa came stone last out of 45 countries!

Only 13% of our grade 4 and 22% of our grade 5 learners had reached minimum, yes minimum, reading skills.

My two daughters could read before they were old enough to go to school, because we started teaching them when they were about 3 years old.

So, you can take ownership of your child’s future.

How?

When we did it, there was no such thing as a desktop computer, so we made flash cards. Now you would set this up in MS Word, or in Excel. It is a fun game that you play every day with your child.

Each page will have only one word. They start off short, very different from each other and very big. I’ve put four on one image but they should not be presented like that.

You put one word up on the screen at a time and say the word.

Your child repeats it.

You put up another. Then another, mixing up the order of the words. Start with about 10 words.

As you child progresses you add more words and make some of them 4 and then 5 letters long. You make them as different from each other as possible.

The next step is to make the words progressively smaller.

You will also start making them different lengths and gradually more similar.

Later you can string two words together like “we jump” or “she eats”. More words can be strung together as your child progresses.

You will soon get the hang of it and will instinctively know when your child is ready for a new challenge.