Reading programs are everywhere. You can find books, tapes, videos, and shows online. If you live in a city, there may also be a tutoring program available. As a parent, he knows that learning to read is one of the most important skills his child will have to master in early childhood, and he is quite overwhelmed by the challenge.

It’s natural to think that it would be much easier to buy a program and use it to teach your child to read. However, there are two big problems with this method. First of all, not all programs work as effectively as they promise. For every “satisfied” customer you see in promotional material, you don’t know how many unsatisfied customers may be lurking behind the scenes. Second, you don’t know if this particular program will be an effective match for your child’s learning style. The program may work well for some children but not for others. Learning to read is not a one-size-fits-all proposition. Most professional reading teachers employ a blended approach that uses a combination of methods and techniques.

Either of these issues is a major concern when you think about the financial cost of most of these programs, not to mention the time commitment involved. Plus, you could spend a lot of time (and money) and actually negatively affect your child’s reading progress.

The real truth (which these so-called educational companies don’t want you to know) is that there is a great deal of free information available to help you teach your child to read, and very often employing a simple common sense approach can be more effective than all those expensive reading programs combined.

Step One – Make sure your child knows the alphabet (both visual recognition and the sounds the letter makes)

Step Two: Build print awareness and literacy by reading books and other materials (posters, greeting cards, handwritten notes, etc.) so children understand that books are read from front to back, lines from left to right and pages from top to bottom.

Step Three – Go beyond step one to build understanding of beginning letter sounds and then add ending sounds (rhymes). Show how many words can be “decoded” by dividing them into initial, intermediate and final sounds

Step Four: Teach high-frequency words with various exercises and regular repetitions

Step Five: Help put it all together by making sentences with the words you know or can decode, and then introduce books (carefully selected or made up by you and the child) that include those words and sentences.

By using these five simple steps, you can teach your child to read without buying expensive reading software. You can make your own materials at home, get materials to use from the Internet, or borrow materials from your local public library. You don’t need to spend a dime on these free reading lessons, except what you choose to buy to build your child’s personal library of books.