Can and should the preschool child learn to read? To answer this and related questions, a study was conducted to determine the effectiveness of a television program and parental home assistance in teaching reading skills to three-year-old children. For five days a week over a 39-week period, an experimental group watched "Wordland Workshop," a program based on instructive word games; another group watched "Captain Kangaroo" to control for the Hawthorne effect. Data provided by pretests, posttests, initial questionnaires, final inventories, and parental monthly reports indicated nonsignificant differences between the two groups for all trait variables except health, which favored the control group, and number of siblings, which had no significant relationship to reading. The experimental group obtained significantly higher scores on the criterion variable, posttest reading performance. Significant relationships were found between this criterion and the following: health, child's interest in program, parental competence, parental interest, and child's interest in home-conducted reading activities. A consensus of experimental group parents reported that the children had apparently enjoyed the television reading program and the parental reinforcement activities. (TI)