If you are lucky, your child will do a lot of it in your presence and out loud, so you can respond with encouraging approval, just the way you did when he started putting sounds together to make speech. Some kids, however, do their learning to read in relative silence, mostly working it out within their own head. We parents can respect that by not interfering by demanding regular demonstrations of what the child prefers to keep private. We'll still notice that the child is making more and more sense out of printed language, that he is reading signs, for example. And we can always do our part by reading to him as much as possible and by surrounding him with print materials of all kinds and with a wide variety of opportunities to begin using print himself.
Books are the most obvious of the printed materials.
At our house, we look at books as being just about as important as food to eat and air to breathe. We are not, in general, very careful with our books, the house is cluttered with them piled here, there, and everywhere. So is the car. Kids fall asleep with books in their hands nearly every night. Over the years, though, we have collected certain favorites that are treated especially tenderly, read carefully and never in the bathtub.