Two decades ago, my then four-year-old daughter, Jacq Attack (even with a degree in linguistics we still call her this:) ‘read’ the wonderful book ‘Froggy Gets Dressed’ like she had a deadline and a film crew waiting.
She flipped pages at double speed, voice racing, finger stabbing at the pictures like, ‘Yes, yes, yes, we know. Froggy put on the boots. Move it along!’
And honestly? She nailed it. The rhythm. The drama. The confidence. A true performance.
Then, I handed her a different book. One she didn’t have memorized. She stared at it. Blinked. Tried to speed-run the first page anyway. Then got frustrated. Suddenly, reading wasn’t a familiar script anymore. It was work.
Early literacy looks like magic from the outside… until it doesn’t. Kids, like Miss Attack, can appear “advanced” in one moment and completely stuck the next. Not because they’re not smart, but because literacy develops in stages.
Here are the four stages of early literacy. When we understand the staircase, we stop panicking when our kids are standing on a different step than we expected.
1) Emergent Literacy (Birth–Pre-K)
The “I’m not reading yet, but I’m collecting all the parts” phase.
Emergent literacy is built through:
- Talking (a lot—kids learn language by hearing it)
- Rhymes and songs (they train the ear to hear sound patterns)
- Being read to (so kids learn how stories work)
- Play with print (pointing at words, scribbling, “writing” shopping lists) In this stage, kids “read” pictures, memorize favorite books, and start noticing letters in the wild—on signs, snack boxes, and the side of the cereal they’re insisting is dinner.
2) Early Reading / Alphabetic Stage (Kindergarten–1st Grade)
Where letters become sounds, and sounds become words.
Kids start decoding, sounding out c-a-t and realizing it equals ‘cat’. They learn basic phonics patterns and begin reading simple texts that are designed to practice those skills. This stage is where reading stops being a performance and starts being a puzzle because decoding requires slowing down—exactly what they do not want to do.
3) Developing Reader (1st–3rd Grade)
Here’s where reading gets smoother.
Kids start recognizing more words automatically, reading with more fluency, and understanding more of what they read. Vocabulary grows fast, and comprehension becomes the main event. By the end of this stage, reading should start shifting from “the thing we’re learning” to “the tool we use to learn everything else.”
4) Fluent Reader (3rd Grade and Beyond)
Fluent readers use reading to do life.
They read to learn science facts, follow directions, build arguments, understand characters, and survive group projects. Reading becomes less about decoding and more about connecting ideas, making inferences, spotting themes. This is the stage where reading opens doors. And it’s why the earlier stages matter so much. If kids don’t get the foundations, the later work feels like trying to run in crocs.
As adults, our job is to enjoy the journey and encourage their love of reading. Very cool! Watching Jacq Attack speed-read Froggy Gets Dressed was hilarious and also kind of perfect. It demonstrated that early literacy isn’t a straight line. Kids leap, stall, memorize, guess, try again, and until it clicks!
If your little one can “read” one book like a tiny auctioneer but can’t decode a new sentence yet? Congrats. They’re learning exactly the way they’re supposed to.