A love of reading starts long before phonics

There’s a particular look a book corner has in late August. Well loved, slightly wrecked, spines gone soft from a year of small hands. As settings tidy and refresh before September, it’s worth remembering what that corner is actually for. Reading doesn’t start with letters. It starts here, years earlier, in laps and songs and the fiftieth reading of the same story about a bear.

Early literacy begins at birth, in the back-and-forth of conversation, the rhythm of rhymes and the shared attention of a story. Get those foundations right and phonics, when it eventually arrives, has something to stand on.

Tuning the ears before teaching the letters

Before a child can ever map sounds to letters, they need to hear the sounds themselves. That’s phonological awareness, and it’s built through play: noticing the difference between a bell and a shaker, clapping the beats in their own name, spotting that cat and hat do something pleasing together, relishing a line of silly alliteration.

This is what Phase One phonics in the early years actually means, and it’s worth saying plainly because it gets misunderstood: it’s about listening, not letters. The pressure to start letter sounds early, sometimes from keen parents, usually shortchanges the stage that matters most. A four-year-old who can hear rhyme, keep a beat and play with sounds is better prepared for reading than one who has been drilled on flashcards but can’t tell you what rhymes with dog.

Songs and rhymes do this work brilliantly, which is why the settings with the strongest early literacy tend to be the singiest. Not a coincidence. Every verse of a rhyme is ear training dressed up as fun.

Stories, everywhere, on repeat

Children ask for the same book over and over because repetition is how they learn: the tune of the sentences, the meaning of new words, the shape of a story. The twentieth reading isn’t a failure of imagination, it’s the point. Share it well: take your time, do the voices, pause before the page turn, and talk around the book rather than just through it. What do you think happens next? Have you ever felt like that?

A language-rich environment does the rest of the shift. Books in every area, not quarantined in the corner: recipe books by the play dough, manuals in the construction area. Print that children actually use, their names on pegs, real labels they see adults reading, rather than laminated words on every surface that nobody looks at twice.

Our Early Literacy, Phonics and a Love of Reading course covers this whole journey, from how literacy develops from birth through Phase One phonics to creating an environment where books are irresistible.

Writing starts as scribble, and that’s fine

Mark making follows the same logic as reading: the desire comes first, the accuracy much later. A two-year-old dragging a stick through mud and announcing it says their name has understood something enormous, that marks carry meaning. Everything else is refinement.

The adult’s job is to treat those early marks as real writing. Ask what it says. Write the child’s words under their picture while they watch, because seeing speech turn into print is a small magic trick that never gets old. Offer clipboards in the construction area and notepads in the home corner, so writing shows up wherever the play is.

Beyond that, the job in the early years is big movements and strong hands. Chunky chalk, decorating dough, ribbon twirling, painting the fence with water. Shoulder and wrist strength come before pencil grip, and a child who reaches for the mark-making trolley by choice is further along than one who forms letters under duress.

So as you patch up the book corner for September, replace the casualties, keep the battered favourites. A book gone soft at the spine is evidence of a job well done.