When should I start teaching my toddler how to read?

You can start showing and reading to your baby simple board books with pictures and labels from as young as six months old. Progress to repetitive and rhyming books when he/she reaches one to two years old. Between two and three, you can change to books with more text and simply story lines. These are to cultivate the interest in books from a young age. You can also use alphabet books to help toddlers learn isolate letters. However, it would only be at around ages of five or six that a child truly “learns” how to read. Reading is actually a skill a child will pick up on his/her own without and direct teaching involved. Here is an article with some simple tips that will help your child pick up reading: http://www.icanteachmychild.com/10-steps-to-teaching-your-child-to-read/ All the suggestions sounds like fun activities you can do with your child. Have fun!

For young babies, flip and flap books are more engaging, you can find this type of books in national library under baby books section.  When baby is young the main purposes of reading to them are create bonding between parent and kid and nurture reading interests since young. Whether they can recognise words and read or not is not important before age of 5-6 years old.  If you want to train your baby to read and recognise words, there is a book called How to Teach Your Baby to Read by Glenn Doman, where flash cards method is used. However, using flash cards to learn how to read got its problem too as the kid might develop dylexia and can't read new words through sound blendings. Once your child is 4 years old, you can start to teach Phonics to guide her/him to read phoenetically.

Definately there's no definite time to do so. I as a father started with buying big size books like 2" by 3" when my daughter was able to sit by herself so she can see everything in position which we see. I started showing her fruits and basic shapes with alphabet so she scan easily relate. As she grew older she started to understand A as an Apple B as an Ball so on. Latter on bought mat with letters and alphabet cards and ask her to match and by age of 2 she was perfectly able to match, relate and understand what's this all exactly. I'll post photos in below this answer. But don't over do anything let her play more than teaching.

I started showing picture books to my daughter when she was about 8+ months and read to her everyday for about 30 minutes or so. Eventually, I would let her finish up my sentence all the way. I'm sure it was because she could memory the storyline pretty well, but it definitely helped her in recognizing words. She started reading off everything she could see at about 5 years old, and I'm proud to say that her English teacher in Primary 1 had mentioned to me that she's amongst the better readers in her class.

you can start your baby on books right from birth and gradually it will become a habit for baby too. board books as well as cloth books are great for newborns, and you can keep them engaged for hours. touch the word you are reading and say it out loud over and over. gradually your baby will remember the word. these are the first steps to teach your baby to read. by the age of 3 and half your baby will should be able to know phonetics and read basic 3 letter words.

Start when they are young. Read to them. Allocate reading time. It is good for the routine and start cultivating reading from an early age.

Start reading on your baby even she's a new born. Invest on colorful books. When she starts to see colors, those books will be helpful.

Alphabet board on wall so she can always analyse whenever she wants. Similar I have for fruits vegetables vehicle etc..

O started reading during my pregnancy and now even after baby is born we read to him every night.

thanks