You do not need to be a teacher to support your child’s phonics learning at home. What matters most is building the right skills progressively, starting with the foundations and introducing new skills as your child becomes ready.
Even 10 focused minutes a day can make a meaningful difference. Regular practice helps reinforce what your child is learning while keeping the experience manageable and enjoyable.
Here is a simple step-by-step approach to get started:
Before introducing letters, help your child become familiar with the sounds they hear in words.
Try simple activities such as clapping out the syllables in your child’s name, finding objects at home that begin with the same sound, or slowly saying the sounds in a word, such as “m-a-n”, and asking your child to identify the word.
Why this comes first: recognising individual sounds in spoken words builds an important foundation for phonics. Once children can hear these sounds, they can begin learning how they connect to letters.
When to move on: when your child can recognise simple sounds in words, such as identifying the first sound, and is becoming comfortable with rhyming words.
Teach your child the sound each letter makes, rather than focusing only on its letter name. For example, s makes the /s/ sound rather than “ess”.
Start with a small group of letters that can be combined to form simple words. A common starting set is s, a, t, p, i, n, as these letters can quickly be used to build many different words.
Say the sound cleanly. For example, b should be pronounced /b/ rather than “buh”. Adding an extra vowel sound can make it more difficult for children to blend sounds together when they begin reading words.
When to move on: your child can confidently recognise and say the sounds for most of the letters they have learnt.
This is the step where children begin combining individual sounds to form a complete word, and it can take time to master.
Take three letters that form a simple word, such as s, a, t. Say each sound separately, then gradually bring the sounds closer together until your child can hear and say “sat”.
Every child progresses at a different pace. Give your child plenty of opportunities to practise without rushing them.
If they are stuck: try stretching the sounds and joining them together, such as “ssssaaaat”. This can make it easier for your child to hear how the individual sounds come together to form a word.
When to move on: your child can blend and read simple words, including words they have not seen before.
Once your child is comfortable with basic letter sounds and blending, introduce more complex phonics patterns. These include two letters making one sound (sh, ch, th, ck), silent ‘e’ (hop → hope), and common vowel combinations such as ai, ee and oa.
Introduce these patterns gradually, giving your child opportunities to practise reading words that contain each new pattern before introducing another.
When to move on: your child can recognise familiar phonics patterns in new words and attempt to sound them out rather than relying on pictures or guessing.
Some common English words, such as the, said, was and one, do not follow the phonics patterns your child may have learnt.
Introduce these words gradually and practise them alongside decodable words. The aim is to help your child recognise these common words while continuing to use their phonics skills to decode words whenever possible.
Do not correct every error immediately. Self-correction is an important skill, and it develops when children have the proper guidance.
Do not let them guess from pictures. It looks like reading and it is not. Cover the picture if you need to.
Do not run long sessions. Ten minutes daily beats an hour weekly, comfortably. Stop before frustration, not after it.
Do not teach letter names and sounds at once. It is actually more important for children to know the letter sounds first rather than the names. Do not compare. Children learn to read at very different rates. The important thing is to remain patient and focus on your child’s individual progress.
For more tips on supporting phonics learning at home, see six common mistakes parents make when teaching phonics.
For the pre-reading stage, three strategies to develop phonemic awareness covers step 1 in more depth.
That is the whole session. Doing it most days matters more than doing it perfectly.
If your child has been stuck at the same step for several weeks, more of the same rarely helps. Usually something earlier in the sequence needs revisiting, and it is hard to spot which.
That is what an English Assessment is for. Reading Foundations is I Can Read's pre-reading programme for children building these skills, and an English Assessment at your nearest I Can Read centre will show you exactly where the gap is — placement is based on literacy ability rather than age alone.
Start with sounds, not letters: play with rhymes and first sounds until your child can hear the parts of a spoken word. Then teach letter sounds — s, a, t, p, i, n first — saying each sound cleanly, and move to blending three sounds into short words. Ten focused minutes a day, in that order, is enough at four.
Around ten minutes for a four- or five-year-old. Short and daily beats long and occasional.
That is a blending gap, not a knowledge gap. Stretch the sounds with your voice rather than separating them, and practise with three-letter words only until it clicks.
Lowercase. It is what most text uses.
Not if you ask what they are working on. Reinforcing the same method helps; running a different one alongside can confuse a child mid-stage.
Not harder, but explicit teaching matters more. Children hearing several languages benefit from being shown the English sound system directly rather than inferring it.