Show your child that reading is everywhere. Read with your child the newspaper, a book, a magazine or even the junk mail. As you read aloud, emphasize beginning sounds and follow along with your finger under the text. Do the same with writing, and involve children in preparing grocery lists, writing thank you notes or filling out a check registry. As children see language in print and how it corresponds to what they hear, they will gain awareness into how those sounds and shapes go together.
Children who are old enough to talk can begin to rhyme. Spend car rides and walks to the park playing rhyming word games. For example, "bat, mat, sat... Gracie, can you think of another?" "That's right, cat!" Any word, nonsense or real, that fits the rhyme should be encouraged. "yat" is just as good as "cat." It's the ability to hear the sound and recreate it that's important. Rhyme emphasizes the ending sounds or phonemes of words. You can play similar games using beginning sounds. "Grace, grocery, grape, great... can you think of a "gr" word?"
Nursery rhymes have been around for generations. The consistent rhyme and rhythm of nursery rhymes and predictable rhyming books help children to hear chunks of letter sounds together. Spend time reading familiar rhyming books together and read the same books repeatedly. As your child becomes comfortable with the words and their sounds, point to the words as you read. Encourage your child to match the sounds they hear with the text that they see.
Before individual letter sounds can be heard, children need to learn to break words into chunks of sound. Help them to hear syllables by clapping out words. "Mom-my, Dad-dy, Gra-cie, oat-meal, they all have two chunks. What about El-mo...or how about pupp-y-dog?" Once these chunks are broken apart, you can introduce the letters that create those sounds. "Dogg-y... I hear duh and guh, and this is how you draw those sounds...d and g." By breaking down language at home, you prepare your child for an easy entrance into the world of reading.