For the child to learn to read and write, several prerequisites should be present and stimulated. First, learning to read is built on a foundation of language that should be stimulated since birth.

Here is a list of early literacy milestones. However, you must consider that every child develops at a different pace, but these are general guidelines for tracking your child’s development. When in doubt, it’s always recommended to consult a specialist.

Early literacy milestones (ability to read and write) from 1 till 3 years old:

Children usually begin to:

• Hold and walk with books.
• Avoid putting books in their mouth right away.
• Turn board book pages.
• Pretend to read a book.
• Give the book to an adult to read for them.
• Scribble on paper.
• Turn the book right-side-up.
• Answer questions about the story and identify objects in books, such as "Where's the boy?" or "What does the cat say?"
• Name familiar pictures in a book.
• Use pointing to identify named objects.
• Finish sentences in books they know well.
• Have a favorite book and request it to be read often.

Literacy milestones (ability to read and write) from 3 till 4 years old:

• Sit still for a longer period while listening to a story, and enjoy retelling stories.
• Enjoy talking about storybooks.
• Identify familiar signs and labels, such as Pepsi, Coca-Cola...
• Know the correct way to hold and handle a book.
• Identify some letters and make some letter-sound matches, such as the letter "K" makes the sound /k/.
• Start noticing words that rhyme, and they participate in rhyming games.
• Understand that words are read from left to right in English or French and from right to left in Arabic, and pages are read from top to bottom.
• May start to recognize their written name.
• Make attempts to read and write.
• Start drawing and can differentiate between a drawing and a written word.
• Start differentiating between 2 visually similar symbols/pictures and 2 sounds auditorily similar such as b/p.

Literacy milestones (ability to read and write) from 4 till 5 years old:

• Ask and answer who, what, where, when, why, and how questions about a story.
• Put events/pictures of a story in the correct order, and tell the story using linking words such as: first, then, at the end...
• Predict what happens next in a story.
• Start copying letters and numbers.
• Match each letter to the sound it represents.
• Begin to match spoken words with written ones.
• Start to sight-read some words, such as: "the", "is", "on"...
• Start reading or asking adults to read books for information and fun.
• Identify the beginning, middle, and ending sounds in simple words, such as "hat", "mop"...
• Change the beginning sound of a word, for example: "sat" --> "hat".
• Segment words into syllables, "panda" --> "pan" "da".