3.7 year old desperate to read - how can I help or encourage this?

[ministryofsleep]

DS is pretending to read his books to himself, and is desperate to be able to read himself and is asking why he can't. I want to encourage him without being pushy and let him go at his own pace. Has anyone else had a preschooler interested in reading, which books did you use and how did you encourage them? TIA

My daughter was ready to read at this age.I started off very slowly with cat, mat, rat, sat etc
There are also some phonics books created by Ruth Miskin and published by Oxford University Press that she loved and learnt very quickly with.

I went to WHSmiths and brought a couple of workbooks on teaching pre reading skills (also writing ones) when ds was desperate to learn at about the same age.

Mostly they concentrate on recognising letters and being able to control a pen and recognising shapes and patterns. After the tantrum that it wasn't a case of 1 day and he could read a novel, he enjoyed doing it.

They were called 'I can read letters' 'get ready for writing' and 'get ready for reading'.
£2.99 each (so not too expensive) adn had stickers and a space for them when you completed each page. Designed for preschoolers.

I'd start with something similar if I were you and move onto more if he finishes them.

The reason I was reluctant to launch ds into reading was
a) I didn't know best way to do it
b) I didn't want to teach diff method to what he would learn at school and so confuse him in future.

thanks everyone, TheArmadillo I am going to check WHSmith out at the weekend, in the meantime I bought a Mr Men getting ready to read book off ebay

I got our ds really familiar with the alphabet first. Was always writing a letter out for him and saying it phonetically (and also common words like his name, Mummy etc..). Also got him some foam letters to play with in the bath. Then supplemented with the letterland magazines. Ds really "got"the stories about how to remember to write them. At same time was trying to do lots of pen skills with him (but in a purely for fun way - squiggles, zigzags, waves etc.... and encouraging him by buying lots of different kinds of felt-tips, pencils etc..). Then progressed to asking what letter cat started with etc. Then (when he got that concept) progressed to spelling it in the bath with his letters. Before starting reception he was then writing these words too. Didn't officically read before reception but could recognise and write lots of three-letter and some four-letter words. Could officially read very quickly (teacher did that bit). They spent the first term doing jolly phonics - so learning the action or each letter which he also enjoyed (you can buy their books in bookshops). Somehow managed to do all this in the year before reception (so shortly before he turned 4).