Tips and tricks on how to start teaching a four-year-old to read.

Start out with about 20 sight words. Several of these words should be nouns, adjectives and a few verbs. Then use these words to label items around the house. When the child becomes comfortable with that activity and is able to name the words. The next action should be to make sentences using these words. For example, "I see a brown cat". Then replace words within sentences to create new sentences. Change the word "cat" to "dog", and change the word "brown" to "red" and so on. Next, ask the child to pick out and hand you the different words within each sentence. Then finally have the child create some sentences on his own using these 20 sight words. As the child gets better at these different activities, you can continue to add new words.