Before your child is ready to learn letter identification and phonics, there are many other skills that you can focus on. For a child to be ready to learn to read, she needs to develop auditory memory and auditory discrimination as well as visual memory and discrimination. Memory is remembering and recognizing sounds or images. Discrimination is the ability to distinguish the difference in sounds or images. Your child also needs to learn the symbolic nature of written language — in other words, that words are talk written down. Additionally, building your child's vocabulary will also help her with reading later on.

Do You Remember?

Help your child develop her visual memory with this game. Try adding more objects as your child matures.

• Show your child three or four common objects or toys. Encourage her to name them.

• Hide the items.

• Challenge your child to recall and tell you what objects are hidden.

Captions

This is a fantastic way to show your child that words are talk written down. Your child will be particularly motivated to “read” her own words.

• Whenever your child draws or paints a picture, ask her to tell you about what she created. Write down her words, and create a caption for the art work. Be sure to read it back to her.

• As an alternative, you can show your child photos or pictures in a book. Invite her to supply a caption by asking her to tell a story about the picture. Again, be sure to write down and review her words.

Does Not Belong

This activity teaches visual discrimination in the same way as the well-known Sesame Street song, “One of These Things Is Not Like the Other.” You can make many game pieces in varying degrees of complication.

• Using the ruler, draw lines to divide each sheet of paper into four equal sections.

• Draw or color identical shapes or pictures in three of the sections. Choose a different square on each sheet to leave blank.

• Draw an item that is different from the others in the fourth square. For example, you may have three squares and one triangle, three red dots and one blue dot, or three dogs and a cat.

• Ask your child to identify the object that is different.

What Did You Say?

Enhance your child's listening skills and auditory discrimination with this silly activity.

• Review a picture book or magazine with your child.

• As you are browsing the pictures, point to different objects and identify them. Ask your child to listen closely.

• On occasion, intentionally misidentify a picture. For example, point to a picture of a car and say “can,” or point to a picture of a boat and say “goat.”

• Have your child stop you when she catches you making a mistake. Ask her to say the word correctly.

Who Said That?

This fun game will help your child with auditory memory skills. You can also play this game using sounds from common household objects that make distinctive noises, such as an alarm clock or telephone.

• Glue the pictures to the index cards.

• Play the recording of animal sounds. Ask your child which picture shows the animal that makes that sound.