Pre-reading activities to try with your toddler

Pre-reading skills develop years before school, and they come in six parts: vocabulary, print motivation, print awareness, narrative skill, phonological awareness and letter knowledge. Each can be built at home with everyday activities, and the parent, who knows the child’s moods and ways best, is the ideal teacher for all six.

Research shows children get ready to read long before they start school, and your role is central: children learn best when they are in a good mood, and nobody reads your child’s moods like you do. Kids learn best by doing, and by doing with you. Every chance to read together, tell stories and talk about them is a lesson in disguise.

Why do pre-reading skills matter?

They lay the foundation for becoming a good reader later, and they do quieter work too: parents reading to children builds connection and a future love of books; pre-reading is a key step toward school readiness (knowing a book runs front to back, words run left to right); and recognising words and letters gives a child the confidence to voice their own thoughts and ideas.

The six pre-reading skills, and how to build each

1. Vocabulary

Talk with your child, about feelings, yours and theirs, and about whatever is happening around you, adding details they can grasp. Read together every day, and talk about the story and pictures; that talk is where the words transfer. Children with larger vocabularies become better readers, because knowing words is what lets them recognise written ones and understand what they read. (How to teach word meanings has the full playbook for older children.)

2. Print motivation

Make reading time special: closeness, a lap, your full attention. Visit the public library or a reading club when you can. Children who enjoy books want to learn to read them; motivation is a skill you build like any other.

3. Print awareness

Read aloud from everything, not just books: labels, signs, lists, menus. Point to words as you say them, especially repeating ones, and let your child hold the book and “read” the story to you. Familiarity with print teaches the child that these marks are useful and friendly.

4. Narrative skills

Tell stories often, and trade them: ask what happened at school or the playground, and tell them something real from your day. Re-read favourite books freely, and then switch roles, you listening while your child tells the story. Stories teach that events happen in order, and a child who can retell a story is rehearsing the comprehension they will need as a reader.

5. Phonological awareness

Sing nursery rhymes and invent silly nonsense ones. Play word games: “What sounds like see?” “What starts with the same sound as ran?” Hearing the sounds inside words is what later lets a child sound words out; it is the single most predictive pre-reading skill, and there is a whole toolbox for it.

6. Letter knowledge

Start with shapes, then letter shapes: which are the same, which differ. Write the letters of your child’s name in clay or with magnetic letters and let them try; read alphabet books with big clear letters and pictures. Knowing letter names and sounds is the final piece that lets a child begin sounding out words.

None of the six needs a desk, a worksheet or a single flashcard drill. They fit inside cuddles, car rides and grocery queues.

How much, and when?

Little and often beats long and rare: minutes a day inside routines you already have. The skills interleave naturally; one bedtime story exercises all six. And if these activities stay unusually hard as your toddler approaches preschool age, especially the rhyming and sound games, keep an eye on the early signs of literacy challenges; noticing early is the cheapest intervention there is.

Dr. V.S. Gayathri is a Certified Dyslexia Therapist, an Orton-Gillingham trained literacy specialist, and the founder of Flourishing Kids. She has delivered over 4,000 hours of one-to-one reading and spelling intervention, helping children across multiple countries build stronger literacy skills. For a picture of where your toddler’s pre-reading skills stand, get in touch for a free 15-minute conversation.