As an English teacher and the mother of a boy in reception class, I know how hard it can be to strike the balance between supporting your child – and their teacher – with their early learning and becoming the sort of scary, deranged tiger-Mummy that teachers dread meeting on consultation days. Here are just 5 things – as both a mother and a teacher –  that I have found to be useful:

1. Don’t ‘help them with their reading’

Never ask your child to sit down and ‘do his/her reading with you’. This is likely to engender the same emotional response as someone asking me to sit through 90 minutes of grown men passing a ball back and forth to each other’s feet, as well as the same slim chance of it actually happening. The main thing wrong with this approach is that it treats reading as if it were some kind of separate activity – something that is divorced from the child’s every day life – instead of something which should be an integral part of it. (though if you do make this beginner’s error and are met with the same response I was: ‘Noooo! Never!’ the situation can be remedied by asking the child’s 3 year old sister if she would like to practise her letter sounds.) Because sometimes, just sometimes,  sibling rivalry works in your favour…

2. Try to protect ‘reading for pleasure’

This can be tough early on, when they know so few words.Most schools will provide some sort of reading log or journal, which is sent home with a book/s and phonics cards and this means that even at this early stage there is some expectation for parents to sit down with their child to ‘practise’ what they have learnt that week. In my experience, it is best to do this – from the child’s perspective – as informally and unconsciously as possible.

My child’s school sends home two books each week: one is usually from the Oxford reading scheme and one is a book that the child has chosen his/herself from their classroom. So, if your child – like mine – has books sent home every week from school, I tend to leave the ‘learning reading’ book in the bag and enjoy the ‘story’ book together. This way, my son will happily ‘read’ the words he knows when he has chosen the book himself and enjoys the story. Moreover, it gives him the added motivation to learn more, as he sees the link between reading and pleasure. Most schools will read the ‘learning reading’ book with each child once a week at school and the scintillating antics of Mum Bug – if you’re not yet familiar with this, then you’re in for a treat –  and her bag only seem to stretch so far…! Doing this hopefully ensures that the reading you and your child share is always something that they enjoy, rather than a chore.

3. Play lots of games and keep it casual

We all know that children learn best through play, when learning is not a conscious activity. Primary teachers – particularly those in the earliest years – recognise this and most learning in reception classes and Year 1 takes place through play-based activities. Parents sometimes forget this when it comes to helping their children with reading, so here are a few words and sounds based activities which I have found my little boy is more than willing to engage with:

* Phonics treasure hunt – use phonics flash cards (letter sounds) to make a treasure hunt around the house. Children can use the cards to make CVC (consonant-vowel-consonant) words when they have completed the hunt. (NB: real treasure – of the chocolate-based variety – was an essential in our house when we played this game…)

* Out and about/phonics eye spy – Ask your child to look out for objects that begin with a certain letter sound whenever you go out. You could pick one sound each trip and just focus upon that, or mix it up a bit with different sounds. A phonics-based eye spy is also a good alternative.

* Go fish – The old, gold, favourite game works well with magnetic plastic letters and mini fishing rods. You can ask them to fish for specific sounds and then use them to spell out CVC words.

*Bath phonics – use bath pens to write letters and sound them out and then spell out CVC words. (Apologies, this is a messy one…!)

*Whiteboard – have a whiteboard in a communal space with magnetic letter sounds or key words. Let the child explore this themselves without direction unless they ask for help. A nice, fat marker pen always seems to help entice them…!

*iPad – for those of you who don’t disapprove of the inevitable combination of iPads and under 5s there are some clever apps out there that can help children learn. In our house we love the Alphablocks app and Jolly Phonics letter sounds. Again, this works best if you just leave them on the iPad without mentioning they’re there (and it also saved me from hearing a few hundred renditions of Princess Sofia and her bloody princess bloody perfect slumber party) Apparently, that’s not the official name of the app…

4. Don’t start too early

I have friends who started introducing phonics to their children before they started school. I didn’t – largely at the time because I was unsure of how my son’s school would teach it and wanted to avoid any possible confusion – and my son attended a preschool who had a child-led policy of only introducing letter sounds if a child showed a curiosity about reading. It was only after attending a phonics evening at my son’s school and helping out in his classroom that I actually felt as if I had an understanding of how they would approach early reading. Although phonics is a pretty universal – though not uncontroversial – strategy, each school may approach it in a slightly different way, so it’s important to know that any work you do with your child is supporting the teacher’s work, rather than causing confusion.

5. Relax…

Learning to read is not unlike all those other milestones that mothers parents like to beat themselves up over: learning to talk, learning to walk, potty training, sleeping through…Yes, they will get there. No, it’s not a indicator of wider intelligence. Like anything else we try get our children to do, a gentle approach is best, or we risk putting them off for life. So let’s give ourselves a break and remember: reading is a life-long pleasure, not a skill to be measured.