Many moons ago, they came up with a program called “Head Start.” I don’t have a clue if it did any good or how much. However, the idea was to help underprivileged children get a leg up on education. As far as I can figure, they don’t seem to be doing better; maybe worse.

However, I can tell you how to give your children a real head start that you will be able to see very quickly. Many say that three is too young to teach a child how to read and write. The best way to give your child a leg up in school is to prove the experts wrong. By not teaching to read early, you give up the years that a child is best able to learn.

Besides, if you teach them, it will give the both of you an excellent chance to do some serious bonding. Reading a book together will be far better than watching TV together. Consider switching every paragraph. The parent reads one, the child reads one. In the end, your child will be grateful of the time you spend with him or her. Also, they will be thankful for the skill that they will carry with them all through their life… not just for learning, but also for enjoyment. This is especially true given the quality of entertainment on TV and in the movies these days.

I am sure there are those among you that say you would rather a professional do the teaching; someone who knows how. Well, apparently they don’t know how. Have you seen the recent statistics. Most kids by the end of the third grade can’t read at second grade levels. Besides, these are minimum. I suggest that your child should be reading at least third grade level by the end of the second grade.

And so it is that it starts with memory. It is that way with most stuff. Beyond that, it’s practice. practice. It is how we learn to speak, though we don’t realize it. If we do learn the words to speak and never practice, none of us would be good at speaking either. So we speak every day, getting better with practice. Hopefully, our parents correct us from time to time when we use the wrong word in the wrong place.

I would say I could write a book about it, but it would be little more than a pamphlet. It does not take a lot to teach a child to read. It mostly takes time patience with a lot of love tossed in for good measure.

To start with, there are two methods of teaching a child how to read. Some say that phonics is the best. Others will say, no. It slows their reading down. As in many cases, they are both right. However, both methods do require a little memory and drills at the front end.

Regardless of the method, the child must learn the alphabet and the name of every letter. Per se it is not important to know but rather it is an important tool for the teacher. It is also important to understand the concepts of vowels. To be sure, it is important to know them, but more, they should learn that vowels and only the vowels are pronounced with the mouth open. The sounds that the letter “A” makes cannot be properly pronounced unless the mouth is open. The sound itself comes from way back in the throat.

Now, consider that there are 26 letters in the English language. The vowels have 2 or even 3 sounds. “A” has 3 sounds. (aim, apple and amount) Two consonants have 2 sounds, “C” and “G.” For the most part the others have but one sound. If the child memorizes these thirty-some sounds, he/she is well on the way to learning how to read by phonics.

If the child learns the sounds of 3 letters a day, we are talking less than 10 days to conquer the entire alphabet. To be sure, there are a few curves, TH, CH, SH. And then there are the silent letters. That always adds a little fun to the process, but they can be easily overcome quickly. Children pick up that kind of stuff fast. I did. I never had to be told a second time about the silent “E.”

And so it is that a child armed with phonics can pretty much sound out the majority of the words in the English language. The hitch is that sounding out words can take time. It is why so many don’t like the phonics methods. If a person only learns phonics, they will likely never get above 200 words a minute, if that.

And so it is that recognition comes into play. When you realize the number of words in the standard sized college dictionary, it makes the recognition method unsurmountable, but it’s not.

Someone did the research and found that if a person was to just memorize the 100 most modt common words used in English, a person could read about 70-75 percent of the words in a common fiction novel.

So, while the student memorizes the letters and their sounds, in a second session, he also learns to recognize the 100 most common words. 5 a day. That takes 20 days. That means, if the student really works on the phonics for ten days and the appearance of words for 20 days, a three-year-old should be able to read at least a first grade level. That is not too much to expect from a three year old. A few flash cards and an hour a day should be more than enough.

By the way, consider what those 100 words are. Most have four letters or less. (a, the, an, he, she, it. them, they, him, etc.) If you want to find out what the 100 words are, you can google them. They are listed and you can easily make 100 flash cards for them. Most kids love flash cards.

If you go 1000 most common words, if my memory serves me right, a person can read nearly 90 percent of the words in a novel. Hence, we find that the recognition method, when used in conjunction with phonics, a three-year-older can learn a lot of reading, probably in a couple of months. After that, it’s practice. I’d say 1 to 2 hours a day. If it catches on, you might not have to make them read that long. You might reach a point where they want to read more. If it gets to that point, your child will outperform almost every kid in the first grade, and perhaps the second. When kids read a lot, they start learning a lot, many times not on purpose. Many times, they will start reading for the fun of learning. That reading can help them build confidence, which might lead to better public speaking. Now wouldn’t that be a good thing?