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September 10, 2026
Last updated: August 2026
Children start building the skills behind reading and writing years before anyone hands them a book with words to sound out. Long before formal reading instruction begins in Kindergarten, they're developing oral language, learning to hear and play with the sounds inside words, noticing how books and print actually work, growing their vocabulary, and making their first marks on paper. NSW schools describe six building blocks behind learning to read: oral language, phonological awareness, phonics, vocabulary, fluency and comprehension. The first two, plus vocabulary and an understanding of print, are exactly what develops during the preschool years, well before a child sits down to sound out their first decodable book.
None of this needs flashcards or formal lessons at home. Talking with your child, reading together daily, playing with rhyme, and letting them scribble, draw and "write" build these foundations more reliably than anything structured. Here's what each piece actually means, what's typical to see at 3, 4 and 5, and how it comes together in the Wallaby and Kangaroo classes at Kings Road Long Day Preschool in Castle Hill.
Early literacy is everything a child learns about language, sounds, books and print before they can read and write conventionally, and it forms the base that formal reading instruction later builds on. It's one part of the broader picture covered in our school readiness guide for Castle Hill families, which looks at how preschool builds the foundations for school across every area of development, not just literacy.
Raising Children Network describes early literacy as the foundation for doing well at school, socialising, problem-solving and communicating, not just a head start on the alphabet. The literacy experiences children have before school, talking, singing, being read to, rhyming, scribbling and drawing, form brain connections used for language, thinking and understanding for years afterward. A child doesn't need to recognise letters or sound out words to be building real literacy skills. A three-year-old joining in with a rhyme, or "reading" a favourite book from memory while holding it the right way up, is doing exactly that.
Oral language, spoken vocabulary, listening and understanding, is the base every other literacy skill is built on. The NSW Department of Education treats it as the first of the six components behind learning to read, alongside phonological awareness, phonics, vocabulary, fluency and comprehension. Children who talk, listen and are talked with a lot before school tend to arrive with a stronger base for everything that follows, including reading comprehension years later. It's built through ordinary conversation, not drills.
Practically, this looks unremarkable. A parent narrating what's for dinner, singing in the car, or pausing long enough to let a child finish their own sentence is doing exactly the kind of oral language building the research points to.
Phonological awareness is the ability to notice and play with the sounds inside spoken words, separate from what those words mean, and NSW education authorities describe it as the first true building block of learning to read. It develops in a rough order: first noticing whole words in a sentence, then syllables (clapping out "el-e-phant"), then the beginning and end sounds of a word, known as onset and rime (the "c" and "-at" in cat), and eventually individual sounds, or phonemes (hearing that "cat" is c-a-t). The NSW Centre for Effective Reading puts it simply for parents: it's about what you hear and say, not what you see on a page, and you can build it just by playing.
Rhyming games, clapping syllables, and asking "what sound does that word start with?" are all real phonological awareness practice, and they work because they're fun, not because they feel like a lesson.
Print awareness is a child's growing understanding that the marks on a page carry meaning, and that print behaves in particular, learnable ways. Before a child can read a single word, they typically learn that in English we read left to right and top to bottom, that a book holds its story the right way up, that the line of squiggles under a picture is a word, not decoration, and that their own name is a specific, repeatable string of letters. Raising Children Network suggests something as simple as sliding a finger under the words as you read aloud. It shows a child exactly how print moves across a page, well before they can decode any of it themselves.
Vocabulary, the words a child knows and understands, matters for reading because a child is far more likely to recognise a written word if they already know it from speaking and listening. The NSW Department of Education notes that the breadth of a child's vocabulary in the preschool years is a meaningful predictor of reading comprehension years later, well into primary and secondary school. This isn't about teaching unusual words for their own sake. Reading a wide range of books together, explaining new words as they come up ("a lighthouse is a tower that shines a light so boats don't hit the rocks"), and simply talking about a broad range of things all build the vocabulary base that reading comprehension depends on later.
Emergent writing is a child's earliest attempts at putting language on paper, and it starts long before actual letters appear. Scribbling typically comes first, then marks that begin to move left to right the way real writing does, then letter-like shapes, and eventually a child's own name, usually one of the first "real" words a preschooler learns to write. A three-year-old's confident scribble and a four-year-old's wobbly attempt at their own name are both genuine writing development. Scribbles count.
Drawing, painting and everyday mark-making, not formal handwriting practice, build the fine motor control and understanding of print that later handwriting depends on. For more on the physical side of this, see our guide to fine motor skills activities that help preschoolers get ready for school.
The things that genuinely help are all forms of play, not instruction.
At Kings Road Long Day Preschool, early literacy grows out of everyday play rather than sitting apart from it as a separate lesson. In Wallaby Class (3 to 4 years), the focus includes music, movement and foundational literacy: rhyme, songs, stories and conversation, exactly the oral language and phonological awareness building blocks described above. In Kangaroo Class (4 to 5 years), that groundwork continues into a more structured introduction to school readiness, including the research-based Carnine phonics method, so children arrive at Kindergarten with real early experience of how sounds and letters connect, not a blank start.
This sits inside our Learning for Life approach, a play-based, EYLF-aligned philosophy that treats literacy as something children build through relationships, conversation and everyday experience, not worksheets.
There's no single starting age, because early literacy skills develop gradually well before formal reading instruction. Most children begin building oral language and phonological awareness as toddlers, print awareness and vocabulary through the preschool years, and start blending letters and sounds into words once they're taught systematic phonics, usually in Kindergarten and Year 1.
No. Knowing letter names is useful, but it's a much smaller part of school readiness than oral language, phonological awareness and a genuine interest in books and stories. Kindergarten teachers expect to teach the alphabet and phonics formally. What helps most beforehand is a child who's used to being talked with, read to, and encouraged to notice sounds and print.
Yes. Scribbling is the first stage of emergent writing, and it's literacy development, not a delay. Most children move through scribbles, left-to-right marks and letter-like shapes before writing recognisable letters, usually starting with their own name.
Phonological awareness is about sound only: hearing, rhyming and playing with the sounds inside spoken words, something you can do with your eyes closed. Phonics is the next step, connecting those sounds to written letters. Phonological awareness typically develops through the preschool years; phonics is usually taught explicitly once children start school.
Building strong oral language and literacy skills in your first language supports learning English. It doesn't compete with it. Talking, reading and singing with your child in whichever language feels most natural to your family builds the same underlying skills, vocabulary, sound awareness and a love of stories, that transfer across languages.
Kangaroo Class (4 to 5 years) at Kings Road Long Day Preschool introduces a research-based phonics approach, the Carnine method, as part of preparing children for school. This builds on the oral language, rhyme and story-based foundations children develop in Wallaby Class, without replacing play-based learning with formal lessons.
If you'd like to see how everyday play builds these foundations at Kings Road Long Day Preschool, book a tour of our Castle Hill centre, or get in touch if you have a question about how we support early literacy in Wallaby and Kangaroo Class.
