School years › Reading at home
Reading at home: guides for parents
A ten-minute routine, how phonics works, reading aloud by age, and what to do when a child guesses.
- The 10-minute reading routine for beginning readersA daily ten-minute routine for kindergarten to 2nd grade: warm up the sounds, read words, a few tricky words, then a decodable book, with what to say when your child is stuck.
- How phonics works: a guide for parentsWhat phonics is, the order schools usually teach the sounds, the words teachers use (digraph, blend, CVC, heart word), and how to say the sounds at home.
- Reading aloud by age: what to read and what to askWhat to read aloud at each age from 3 to 12 and up, how long, and the questions that get children talking, with free read-alouds to start with.
- When your child guesses words instead of reading themWhy beginning readers guess from pictures or the first letter, what to say instead so they look at every letter, and when to talk to the teacher.
Practice at your child's level
Peabody, our site for children, has free stories and learning games written at each reading level and math grade, with no sign-up. Start where your child is comfortable, not where the calendar says.
- Start reading on Peabody Peabody asks your child's grade, starts the stories a little under it, and moves the level as books run easy or hard.
- Reading levels and math by grade Where each grade starts, and a page for every level and math path.
- The free library Stories sorted by level, to read on screen.
- Decodable readers Stories built from the sounds a beginning reader has been taught.