For many kids, learning to talk comes naturally. Learning to read does not! We're told again and again to read to our kids, and that matters. But what else can we do to help them become confident readers?
This article provides fun, easy ways to build early literacy skills at home, organized around the five pillars of the science of reading. We share how to use your Habbi Habbi Reading Wand, books, and flashcards, what your role looks like at each step, and other games to try at home. No teaching degree required.
In this article:
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What is the Science of Reading?
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Your Role as a Literacy Coach
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Phonological Awareness & Phonemic Awareness
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Phonics
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Vocabulary
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Fluency
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Comprehension
What Is the Science of Reading?
The Science of Reading isn't a curriculum or a single program, it's the large, decades-deep body of research from reading scientists, cognitive psychologists, and educators on how kids' brains actually learn to read: an evidence-based understanding of what works, not guesswork.
That research points to five pillars that work together to build a strong reader:
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Phonological Awareness / Phonemic Awareness - the ability to hear and play with the sounds in spoken words
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Phonics - connecting those sounds to the letters (and letter combinations) that represent them
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Vocabulary - the words a child understands and can use
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Fluency - reading text accurately, quickly, and naturally
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Comprehension - understanding and making meaning from what's read
Here's why this matters: you don't need to be a reading teacher to give your child a head start or extra support. Understanding these five pillars helps you turn everyday moments - bath time, car rides, bedtime - into small, intentional literacy-building opportunities instead of just "reading more" and hoping for the best. Once you know what you're building toward, it's a lot easier to help your child get there.
Your Role as a Literacy Coach
So what does "being a literacy coach" look like day to day? You're not lecturing, and you don't need the five pillars memorized. A coach sets up the moment, prompts the next step, and cheers the attempt, right or wrong. That means creating small windows for practice and asking good follow-up questions.
That's exactly what the Reading Wand helps with. Tap the star icon on any page, and it doesn't just talk to your child, it walks you through what to focus on and how to prompt them, so you always know what you're "supposed" to teach, even if you'd never heard the word "schwa" before today. Think of it as coaching both of you at once: your child hears sounds and words modeled correctly, and you hear what to reinforce next.
With that in mind, let's take the pillars one at a time: what each skill is, how Habbi Habbi does the heavy lifting, and simple ways to bring it into everyday moments.
Phonological Awareness & Phonemic Awareness
Phonological awareness is the ability to hear, identify, and play with the sounds in spoken language, separate from print entirely. It includes noticing syllables, rhymes, and eventually individual sounds, or phonemes (the narrower skill called phonemic awareness). Your child doesn't need to see a single letter, it all happens with their ears.
Before we get to activities, there's one small (but important) thing worth understanding: the schwa.
When we say consonant sounds out loud on their own, we tend to tack on an extra "uh": "buh" for b, "duh" for d, "guh" for g. That trailing "uh" is called a schwa, and it can make blending sounds into words genuinely confusing for early readers: "buh-a-tuh" doesn't blend into "bat" the way clean, clipped sounds do.
The fix is simple, if a little unnatural at first: practice saying letter sounds short and clipped, without the trailing vowel - just "b," "d," "g." To check yourself, hold a hand near your mouth as you say the sound; a puff of extra air or a lingering "uh" means you're adding the schwa. It takes practice to unlearn, but it makes a real difference once your child starts blending sounds into words.
Practice with Habbi Habbi
Your role: sit alongside your child, let the Wand model each sound, and echo it back together. Every book in the Early Literacy collection teaches through play. Tap the star icon on any page for instructions, and check the inside cover to see which of the five pillars that book focuses on and how to guide your child's learning. Every inch of the page is tappable, so go explore together!
Start with our two Word Sounds books: Rhyming & Beginning Sounds first, then Middle & Ending Sounds for a bit more of a challenge. Your child taps their Wand across beautifully illustrated spreads to find words that rhyme or share beginning, middle, or ending sounds, with lift-the-flap questions for extra practice.
Next, move on to Compound Words & Syllables, where kids play with putting words together and breaking them back apart into chunks. It's a bit easier for kids to manipulate these bigger chunks of sound before moving on to individual letter sounds. Our Blending & Segmenting book takes it up a level, using the Wand to put sounds together and pull them apart as your child gets ready to decode, or sound out, words. The ability to segment sounds is both a predictor of later reading success, and important for strong spelling skills.
Notice we're still focused on sounds here, not letters. That comes next!
Other games and activities
For 3-4+ year olds:
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Practice identifying the first sounds in the names of their favorite animals, e.g., "dog." What's the first sound you hear in dog? It doesn't have to be the letter "d" they say back - it's about the sound /d/.
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Practice clapping out the syllables in familiar words and names.
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Play a rhyming game - pick a word, then think of other words that rhyme with it. Or offer two words and ask, "Do these rhyme?"
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Play a compound word game - put two words together to make real (or silly, pretend!) compound words.
For 5-6 year olds:
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Practice identifying the middle and ending sounds in familiar (and unfamiliar!) words.
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A focus on "nonsense" words is supportive for mastery of phonological awareness skills. For example, what’s the last sound in ZOG or DORF?
Phonics
Phonics connects the sounds your child has learned to hear to the letters (and letter combinations) that represent them in print. The process of connecting printed letters to their sounds is what lets kids start decoding words on their own.
Practice with Habbi Habbi
Your role: the Wand models each letter sound and word correctly (handy if you're rusty or were never taught phonics yourself), while your job is to prompt your child to try it and celebrate when they do. Our collection takes your child from letter recognition all the way to their first decodable story, with the Wand supporting you both at every step.
Start with our Alphabet flashcards, which teach kids what letters look and sound like, and how to write them, including step-by-step strokes for writing each uppercase and lowercase letter. Research shows embedded images, like an "a" shaped like an apple, help kids remember both the letter and its sound. Follow the star icon's instructions, or get creative:
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Line the cards up in random order and ask your child, "Can you tap the letter C with your Wand? How about A?"
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Match the uppercase and lowercase letters (in alphabetical order for extra challenge).
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Ask your child to name the letter first, then tap with the Wand to check.
Our Phonics flashcards take the next step: reinforcing letter-sound practice, introducing digraphs (two consonants that form one sound, like "ch" and "th"), and inviting your child to blend sounds into real words. Tap and explore, or get creative - build real or nonsense words with three letter cards in a row (consonant, vowel, consonant, or CVC words) and blend them together with the Wand. Congratulations, your child is reading words!
Tip: you don’t need to tackle the entire set of flashcards (or every page in a book!) at once. In fact, most PreK and Kinder classes focus on just 1-2 letter sounds a week! Pick a few each week and build from there.
CVC words, which you just practiced with the Phonics flashcards, are a foundational word pattern for beginning readers. The next five books in our collection each focus on CVC words built around one of the five vowels: A, E, I, O, and U. Tap with your Wand to hear each sound individually, then blended, then read fluently. Lift the flaps for illustrations that boost comprehension.
Our High Frequency Words book and flashcards go beyond decodable CVC words, introducing words that show up often but don't follow expected letter-sound or spelling patterns taught in this series. Tap the heart to learn which parts need to be learned "by heart," and the Wand models the correct sound. The book also includes sentences that combine CVC and high-frequency words. Tap each word to practice individually, or the check mark to hear the full sentence read fluently.
Our decodable story, Liv and Sam Up in the Red Jet, puts it all together - it's time to read! Your child can use the Wand to follow Liv and Sam's adventure, tapping for individual words if they get stuck, or to hear full sentences read fluently. The Wand brings fun and confidence to reading their first story.
As always, every inch of every book and flashcard is tappable - be sure to explore it all!
Other games and activities
For 3-4+ year olds:
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Letter scavenger hunts in books or magazines - look for the letter "a" and circle it every time you spot it.
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"Letter soup" - write a handful of letters scattered randomly on a page, and ask your child to find the letter "a" (or whatever letter of the day you pick).
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Stick sticky notes or stickers with a letter on blocks or toys, then go find every block or toy with the letter "a" on it.
For 5-6 year olds:
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Use those same lettered blocks or toys to build simple words.
Vocabulary
Vocabulary has two related but distinct parts: words your child understands when they hear them (receptive) and words they can use themselves (expressive). Both matter, and both grow through repetition and exposure in lots of different contexts.
Practice with Habbi Habbi
Your role: repetition - the same word, in as many contexts as you can manage. Every book and flashcard set in our Early Literacy collection is full of intentionally chosen vocabulary words (e.g. we chose many English Spanish cognates - words with the same linguistic roots - for our flashcards). The wider your child's vocabulary, the better they'll read and understand texts. The illustrations, paired with the Reading Wand's audio, help your child hear and practice both new and familiar words, growing their vocabulary along the way.
If you have books from the Habbi Habbi Bilingual Collection, this is also a great time to bring them out. You can set them to English-only mode [link: instructions for switching to English-only mode] or keep them in bilingual mode for multilingual vocabulary practice. Each bilingual book includes 60–300 audio clips, ranging from single words to full sentences, so there's no shortage of chances to practice across topics from animals to vehicles, to food, dinosaurs & more [links to specific titles].
Other games and activities
For 3-4+ year olds - the goal here is repetition across multiple contexts:
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Carry a theme across several activities. Say your child picks "cow" from a set of farm animal toys:
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Play with the cow toy and repeat the name, "cow."
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Read a book that features a cow.
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Do a coloring sheet with a cow on it.
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Sing a song with a cow in it.
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Point out objects during everyday moments - at the grocery store, on a walk, in the car - and repeat the name. For example, point to a nest and say, "That's a nest." Add enough description that they understand what a nest actually is, so later, when they encounter the word while reading, they can recall it.
For 5-6 year olds:
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Play word-stem games. Start with a word like "fish." What other words can your child think of that include it? Fishing, fisher, and so on. This helps them map words to each other and see how language connects.
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As you read to your child, pause to define and explain new words. Books expose kids to so many more words that don’t come up in everyday conversation!
Fluency
Fluency means reading words correctly, at an appropriate pace and naturally, with the phrasing and expression that make it sound like speech, not sounded-out syllables. It really takes off once phonics skills are solid, because gaining fluency means kids spend less mental energy sounding words out and have more energy left for our next pillar: comprehension.
Practice with Habbi Habbi
Your role: instead of modeling individual sounds, you're modeling (or letting the Wand model) what real, expressive speech sounds like, then inviting your child to try it themselves. In the Early Literacy collection, tap a whole word to hear it read fluently, or look for the green check mark to hear a full sentence read the same way. In the Bilingual Collection, our Phase, Sentence, and Story books offer plenty of chances to hear fluent reading out loud — tap your Wand along a sentence, or search the page for hidden phrases the characters say, in English-only or bilingual mode.
Other games and activities
These tend to work best for 5+ year olds (including 6-8 year olds):
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Character reading - ask your child to pretend they're a monster, a high-pitched cat, or a silly goose, and read the text in that character's "voice."
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Speed or “automatic” reading challenge - pick a list of words or a handful of sentences, set a timer, and see how fast they can "beat the clock." Just make sure speed doesn't come at the cost of expression, e.g. if there's a "!" or a "?," it still needs to sound like one.
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Practice high-frequency words - pull from Habbi Habbi flashcards or a list online, and practice five a day until they're known by heart.
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Fly swatter game - spread high-frequency word flashcards out on a rug, call out a word, and have your child find and "swat" it with a fly swatter.
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Word search - tape high-frequency word flashcards (or sticky notes with words written on them) around the room and send your child on a hunt to find the word you call out.
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Re-reading - if your child is receiving decodable books from school, re-reading them at home is a good way to support fluency.
Comprehension
Comprehension is understanding and making meaning from what's read, the whole point of reading in the first place. All four other pillars exist to support this one.
Practice with Habbi Habbi
Your role: ask questions - the Wand can help your child find the answer in the text, but your back-and-forth conversation is what turns a fun story into real understanding. Use the Bilingual Collection in English-only mode (or bilingual mode for extra multilingual practice!):
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Read the Haddie & Lulu story books, with or without the Wand, and ask your child to recall specific things that happened along the way. For example, with Haddie & Lulu's Worldwide Search: What were Haddie & Lulu looking for during their search? What's one place they traveled to?
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Use the Wand to go hunting for details from the story. "Can you use your Wand to find the name of one of the places Haddie & Lulu visited on their search?" It's a fun way to layer in comprehension practice and the bilingual element at the same time.
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The Habbi Habbi Book of Seasons and any of the sentence books work well for this too. Focus on one spread at a time and ask questions about what's happening on the page. Using the Wand makes it even more interactive.
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Liv and Sam Up in the Red Jet, from the Early Literacy collection, is another great comprehension opportunity. Ask your child questions about the story after they finish reading, with or without the Wand to help them answer.
Other games and activities
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After reading, talk through the text together. Who were the characters? What was the problem they faced?
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For 3-4 year olds, keep it to factual recall - e.g., "What were the characters' names?"
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For 5-6+ year olds, push toward inferential and critical thinking - e.g., "What do you think the characters were feeling?"
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Read & act - after finishing a book, ask your child to act out what just happened, using stuffed animals or other props as characters.
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Read & draw - after reading, ask your child to draw what happened in the story, or to direct you as you draw it for them.
Bringing It All Together
You don't need a teaching degree or a strict lesson plan to be your child's literacy coach. You just need to know what you're building toward. The Wand handles a lot of the direct modeling, for both of you; your job is to show up, ask the follow-up question, and make it feel like play rather than practice. Phonological awareness, phonics, vocabulary, fluency, and comprehension aren't five separate to-do lists. They're threads that weave into the reading, games, and conversations you're probably already having. A few clipped-consonant sounds in the car, a rhyming game at the dinner table, a Wand-powered scavenger hunt through a favorite book - it all adds up.
Explore Habbi Habbi's Early Literacy collection and Bilingual Collection to find books, flashcards, and Wand-powered activities that make practicing these five pillars part of your everyday routine.
