How soon is too soon?

Many kids are interested in reading at a very early age. As everyone knows, reading aloud to children is vital! Some studies even encourage you to read aloud to your child in the womb. With my oldest, I was in graduate school and read my textbooks aloud. I tried to make them sound exciting. Think... adolescent psychology to the tune of The Three Bears.
However, some kids are happy to be read to and never really express an interest. How to get them started reading is a post for another day!
How do you help a really young child, as young as 2 years old, who shows an interest in learning to read? The important idea is to encourage their interest in a way that focuses on the sounds of the letters, not necessarily just the letter names. This is especially true of those precocious little ones, because later they are the kids who learn to read by memorizing whole words and never really master the sound/symbol relationship required to be good spellers. So encourage them to learn the sounds of the letters. Use the Blue Set of phonogram cards to build words and help your child sound them out and build their own nonsense words. Encourage their writing by providing lined paper. Teach them the handwriting strokes. Let them trace your letters, then draw some dotted letters for tracing, and finally let them copy. Don't insist that they always write on lined paper, but many children really find that the lines help as they're first learning. For more help, download practice paper and other resources from STEPS Teacher Resources - it's not just for teachers! So the answer is it's never too soon to start learning to read! Just be sure to get started off on the right foot for that first STEP!