Teach your child to read with Under 4 Games

“How can I teach my child to read?”

It’s one of the most common questions we hear.

Maybe you’ve tried educational shows. Maybe you bought flashcards. Maybe your child can sing the alphabet beautifully… but reading still feels like a mystery.

The good news? Reading is not magic. It’s a set of small, learnable skills stacked carefully together.

Let’s break it down.

What Reading Actually Involves

Reading is a combination of:

Recognizing letters
Knowing letter sounds
Moving from left to right
Blending sounds smoothly
Understanding rule-breakers and exceptions

It’s like building with blocks. If one block is missing, the tower wobbles.

Let’s start simple.

Example 1: Reading "CAT"

Imagine your child sees:

C A T

They tap each letter and hear:

Then they blend it together:

c-a-t → cat

That skill, connecting letters to their sounds, is called phonics. And it’s the foundation of reading.

So, which Under 4 Games activities teach this skill?

1. Start with Find and Tap (concrete before abstract)

Children under four are already learning that objects connect to words. A dog has a name. An apple has a name. Their friend has a name. Their toy has a name.

We build on that natural instinct.

In Find & Tap activities, children move from:

…to…

This gradual shift from real-world objects to abstract symbols makes letters feel less intimidating and more familiar.

Here are some of the find-and-tap activities:

Uppercase Letters

Lowercase Letters

If the act of hearing a sound, and pointing out the correct symbol is not enough, we also have the phonics-keypad activity.

2. Teach Letter Sounds with the Phonics Keypad

The Phonics Keypad activity is simple and powerful.

Your child taps a letter. They hear its sound.

Over and over.

Repetition builds confidence. Confidence builds fluency.

This is where children truly internalize that:

B says /b/
M says /m/
S says /s/

Not "bee" or "em", but the sounds used for reading.

Here is what it looks like:

3. Teach Letter Names (Because English Has Rules… and Rebels)

Here’s where English gets interesting.

Some words behave nicely.

“cat” follows the rules.

But what about "home":

The “o” doesn’t say /o/. It says its name as in "oh".

That silent "e" at the end changes everything.

This is often called the "magic-e" rule:

When a word ends in “e”, the “e” stays quiet, and the vowel before it usually says its name.

So children must learn both:

Letter sounds
Letter names

Especially for vowels.

That’s where the Letter Keypad comes in. Tap a letter, hear its name. Clear. Direct. Reinforcing.

Here is what it looks like:

Let's say we've taught the child the letter sounds and the letter names, and now we want to teach them to read the word "cat". This is called blending letter sounds, and it's a really saying the letter sounds as fast as we can.

4. Practice Blending

Blending is the bridge between knowing sounds and actually reading.

It’s simply saying the sounds quickly and smoothly:

c-a-t → cat d-o-g → dog

At first, it feels slow. Mechanical.

Then one day, something clicks. The sounds flow together. The word appears almost instantly.

That moment? It's pure magic.

When I was teaching my daughter to blend, I found Patty Shuckla's blending videos on YouTube to be an excellent resource. We'd play it when going to and coming from daycare and my daughter was singing along until it became second nature.

5. Practice Reading Words

Once your child knows sounds and can blend, they’re ready for Read Words.

The Read Words activity is a row of letters, and when the child taps a letter, it plays the letter sound. When all letters have been tapped, the word is read.

Here are what some common words look like:

6. Handling the Tricky Bits (Exceptions)

English has quirks. Letters that look alike. Sounds that change.

To help children navigate this, Under 4 Games uses visual helpers called augmentations.

These are tiny emoji cues that anchor sounds to letters they may have trouble with e.g. "b" and "d". Here are some more:

Letters	Emoji	Hint Word	Why It Helps
b	🍼	bottle	"b" as in bottle. Children often confuse it with "d" as in dog.
d	🐶	dog	"d" as in dog. Children often confuse it with "b" as in bottle.
a	🍎	apple	"a" as in apple. This differentiates it from the letter name as in "cape" or "cake".
e	🐘	elephant	"e" as in elephant
ē	🦎	iguana	"ē" as in ēguana
i	🦎	iguana	"i" as in iguana
ī	❄️	ice	"ī" as in īce
o	🍊	orange	"o" as in orange
u	😯	oops	"u" as in uoops
l	🦁	lion	"l" as in lion
sh	🐑	sheep	"sh" as in sheep
ch	🪑	chair	"ch" as in chair
tch	🪑	chair	"tch" sounds like "ch"
th	👍	thumb	"th" as in thumb
wh	🐳	whale	"wh" as in whale
ph	📱	phone	"ph" as in phone

7. Practice Reading Stories (The Real Goal)

Reading words is practice.

Reading stories is purpose.

The entire reason we teach children to read is so they can:

Explore ideas
Understand the world
Build imagination
Develop vocabulary
Entertain themselves

And yes… give parents a few quiet minutes. What's there not to like?

In Read Stories, children tap through each word, hear the sounds, and then hear the full sentence read smoothly.

Here are what some common stories look like:

I See a Bee

A Final Note for Parents / Guardians

Teaching a child to read is not a race.

It’s layering skills:

Recognition
Sounds
Names
Blending
Words
Exceptions
Stories

Under 4 Games simply organizes these layers into playful, structured practice.

Short sessions.
Daily repetition.
Lots of encouragement.

And one day, your child looks at a word… and reads it on their own.

That’s when you realize it wasn’t magic after all. It was steady building, one sound at a time. 😄

Enjoy the journey!