Kindergarten, kindergarten, and first grade are essential years in children's lives for learning to read and understanding the basic fundamentals of language arts. Some of these concepts include letter recognition, sight word recognition, capitalization, punctuation, and reading fluency. Everything children learn during these important years will follow them for the rest of their lives. Reading and writing should begin with the basics of letter identification and then progress to writing and reading words and sentences. It is important for children to have a positive learning experience because reading is a very important skill that will continually be needed in everyday life. Comprehensive language arts and balanced literacy are two commonly used methods for teaching language arts to beginning students. There are many activities used to teach young children to read and write, including the use of music in the classroom, sight words, games, and worksheets. There are two main approaches to teaching reading to young students. A common approach is whole language. Kate Walsh states that whole language “emphasizes children's connection with meaningful texts as the preferred path to developing fluent readers” (10). Throughout language, using sentence context to understand a word is essential. Walsh further explains the importance of identifying context throughout language by describing it as “getting children to identify new words by discerning their meaning in the context of the text” (10). Another approach to teaching reading is balanced literacy which, unlike whole language, “blends the literature-based approach with some phonological instruction but only on an “as needed” basis” (Walsh, Glaser, Dunne 10) . By mixing these two conc...... half of the paper...... the student must understand the difference between a capital letter and a lowercase letter and when to use them in different situations. Independent exercises are important in children's learning process because they make them feel like they have accomplished something on their own and show what the child really knows. There are many different approaches to teaching language arts to young students. It is important to understand that every classroom and every child is different. Different activities and methods should be used with different children and different situations. Learning the basics of language arts will accompany children throughout their school years and throughout their lives. Learning to read and write for a young student should be a positive and fun experience. Through different methods, many teachers have made learning fun!