Teaching phonics will help children understand the relationship between the letters that they see and the sounds they make. Many school programs teach phonics to help young children learn to read, although they might include some whole or sight words in the material as well.

The number one step in teaching phonics to a child is to make sure that you are moving at a pace that your child can keep up with. He or she will need to understand the difference between vowels and consonants, and understand the different sounds of the letters in a word. The first words your child will learn to read will be simple consonant-vowel-consonant, words such as big, pat, and hot. Easy words such as these will help your child understand just what the relationship between the sounds in a word are, so that they can be easily deciphered.

The first words that your child reads will probably be words that you have practiced together. For example, if you are teaching your child the sounds of the letters b-a-t then you should include the word "bat" often in the lessons that you are teaching. Your child can not be expected to read the words with letters that they do not know the basic sounds for. After your child knows all of the sounds of the letters, then you can work with your child as he or she reads simple books on their own. Books with short, simple sentences are best for teaching phonics based lessons.

There are a variety of types of plans available for teaching phonics based lessons, but the best ones are those that use both spoken and written components. Helping your child learn to read is perhaps easiest when you have a phonics CD or dvd to provide the sounds, while your child works along in a workbook to help associate the sounds with the letters of the alphabet.

Most children love using flash cards and they can be helpful when you are teaching a child to read. They can be used as a way to quickly go over the sounds of the alphabet, or to use as a component of a cd or dvd to help your child learn to recognize each letter.

Exceptions: Like all subjects, there are exceptions to the rules of phonics. You should begin teaching your child these exceptions only after they have learned the basic sounds of the alphabet, and are ready to begin to learn sight words.

Teaching your child to read is going to take up much of the first few years of school for a complete understanding to take place. , Don't worry if your child seems to be taking a long time to understand phonics.