Whether you are home schooling or have your child in a traditional school, you need to make sure that your child is being taught using a phonics based approach to reading instruction. There are many proven benefits to teaching a child how to read with phonics. If your child is not learning reading with phonics, you need to take steps to make sure that this happens.

How Phonics Helps

Phonics helps children by given them a system to use to read. Instead of having to memorize all of the words in the language, they just have to learn the sounds that letters make. This is far more doable for most children, especially those with reading disabilities.

When you consider the fact that there are nearly 1 million words in the English language, you will understand why it is so difficult for many children to learn to read by memorizing each word individually. In comparison, phonics requires children to learn 44 sounds, or phonemes. This is something most children, if not all, can accomplish. While we do eventually come to a point where we recognize individual words, phonics is the starting point that children need to begin tackling words they do not know.

Phonics works for all children, no matter what their individual struggles may be. Children who are never read to at home may have a more difficult time learning to read, but they can do it with phonics instruction. Also, teaching children with learning disabilities becomes much easier when phonics is used, as it gives the children the "code" for learning to write and read.

Phonics, Writing, and Spelling

Another benefit of phonics instruction is that it ties in directly with reading and writing instruction. Children who are provided with a phonics education are almost always better writers and spellers than those who are required to learn reading one word at a time. Most phonics programs have children learning reading, writing, and spelling side by side, a combination that child development experts feel works well.

Phonics and Your Child’s School

You may find that in spite of these benefits, your child is not learning phonics in his school. This is sad, but the fact is that many schools are following a different reading philosophy that uses sight words rather than phonics. If you find this to be true and your child is struggling to learn to read and write, there are some things you can do to help.

One option, of course, is to consider setting up a home school environment. If you have the time and patience necessary to successfully home school, you can do this and avoid the problem altogether. However, many parents feel more comfortable with their children in a traditional school. If you feel this way, you need to do things at home to provide phonics instruction to your child.

One way to do this is to hire a tutor who uses phonics. However, this can become expensive. A better option is to use a computer program that is phonics based and systematic in its approach to reading instruction. When shopping for a program, avoid one that is too much like a game. Instead, choose something that is fun but will definitely provide your child with a phonics-based education. Child Font is a good example of this type of program. This interactive synthetic phonics program gives you the ability to provide phonics education from a K-12 reading specialist in the comfort of your own home at a very affordable price. You can easily supplement phonics instruction into your child’s day if you use his program.