What does a child need to blossom?
- Healthy food
- A good home for shelter
- Lots of love
- Words and more words
Words to understand, to label, to share, to explain, explore and energize, to create and criticize, to dig and delve! Words and more words!
Children learn to love language long before they ever notice the printed word!
Share a love of language and more specifically – the love of reading!
Here are the key points from the first of three videos
Set aside times for reading:
- Before bed
- After lunch or evening – family reading time
Model reading and share reading by:
- Verbalizing: I need to read the knitting pattern, shopping list, instructions for assembling a toy
- Taking turns – I will read you a story and then you can read me one (they can make up, read the pictures, or recite a popular tale)
- Visiting a library
- Incorporating in games -Act out stories (going on a bear hunt)
- Learning and repetition -Nursery rhymes, songs (rhythm and structure of language)
- Personalizing -include the child/relatives names
- Challenges – what starts/ ends like….
Draw attention to:
- Authors and illustrators
- Beginning, middle and ending of story
- Letters and words (place pointing finger under each word as it is read – find familiar and recurring letters)
- Turning pages in sequence
- Sentences – throw in nonsense sentences or words, note basic punctuation (full stop and capital letter) as sentence markers.
Useful tools:
- Sticky or magnetic letters
- Sandpaper letters (Montessori)
- Chalk
- Play dough
- Sand
- Old magazines
- Envelopes labeled with each letter of the alphabet
- Pancake mix
- Water in squeeze bottle
Check out all three videos on supporting your children as they learn to read.
Next video: Let’s Read! Part 2: … and then they start school
Thank you,
Lesley
Chief Learning Officer