Early Literacy Builds Lifelong Learning

Reading to young children helps build essential skills for school and life. Not only is reading fun, research shows young children who spend time reading with their families enter kindergarten better prepared. In fact, children whose parents read to them at least once a week enter kindergarten with higher developmental competencies in communication, learning skills, cognition, and general knowledge.

First 5 Santa Clara County offers the following ideas and links to resources to help parents and caregivers read with their children. With these tips, children will soon be saying “READ TO ME.”

Read aloud: Read aloud with your child to help stimulate his or her mind, develop verbal skills and build vocabulary.

Encourage early learning: Children are born ready and able to learn. It is never too early to start reading together.

Ask questions: Engage your child by asking questions that relate to the story you are reading together. Ask your child to point to certain colors or objects.

Decide to read daily: Studies show that children who are read to daily begin to develop both communication and thinking skills at a much younger age. Commit to reading together every day to help your child develop the skills necessary to enter school more prepared.

Take a trip to the library: Visit your local library for a free way to read and enjoy the latest book titles. Involve your child by letting him or her choose the books you read together.

Offer age-appropriate books: The types of books you choose should increase in difficulty as your child ages. For babies and toddlers, begin with books that have brightly-colored, simple pictures and feature familiar names and objects. As your child approaches preschool age, read books with more complex words, repetition and rhyme.

Make reading fun: Help instill a love of reading in your child by making reading fun. Take reading beyond the book by writing (and reading) your own story together or acting out scenes from your favorite book.

Enjoy reading everywhere: Show your child that the joy of reading is not limited to books. Read labels and store signs aloud while grocery shopping. Make-up stories during long car rides and share information about your family while looking through picture albums.

Remember, childhood doesn’t last forever but the experience lasts a lifetime. Read, talk and play with your child every day. For more information on early literacy or local programs for young children and their families, visit www.first5kids.org

Creating a Love of Reading

Here are some techniques parents can use with their babies and toddlers to help prepare them to read.

For Babies

Talk with your baby while feeding, bathing, and diapering
Language is the cornerstone of reading development, so the opportunities parents have to talk with babies — while feeding, during bath time, and when diapering — are important. When you talk to your baby during the course of the day, you are really giving him or her a double bonus! You are teaching language and letting your baby know that he or she is an important person to communicate with.

Tell nursery rhymes or sing simple songs with your baby
This provides infants with the opportunity to predict “what comes next,” an important part of literacy development.

Offer your baby cardboard books
Picture books created for babies provide the opportunity for infants to begin having independent experiences with reading materials. And, reading the books to a baby provides the literature exposure, the pleasure of the physical contact, and the opportunity to experience reading as a positive experience.

For Toddlers

Use books with your toddler to ask and answer questions
Toddlers’ rapidly expanding “wh” verbal skills (who?, what?, where?, why?) provide many opportunities for parents to use books to help children ask and answer questions. While reading books to toddlers, parents can ask questions that help them practice the new things they’re learning (“what does the cow say?”), learn about cause and effect (“what will happen?”), and develop sorting and organizing skills.

Comment on things that happen around your toddler throughout the day
Adults help toddlers process their “wh” experience (who?, what?, where?, why?) by commenting on situations around them: “I wonder who lives there?”, “what does that sign tell us we have to do?”, “where’s the milk for breakfast?”, “why is this wet?”.

Encourage your toddler to use crayons, markers, and pencils
Toddlers are developing the fine motor skills necessary to hold and use writing utensils. Because writing is part of the literacy experience, providing toddlers with supervised writing and marking activities is not only important, but also pleasurable, as toddlers explore their “I do it myself!” approach to life.

For Preschoolers

Create a “print-rich” environment for your preschooler
Preschoolers are very aware of the signs and symbols that represent their names, their ages, where they live, the materials that they use, and many other aspects of their daily living experience. Parents can help them become used to reading and writing by pointing out public signs (traffic signs, billboards, restrooms and exit signs, etc.), asking preschoolers to help make grocery lists, and playing organized games (alphabet Bingo) and spontaneous games (“let’s all look for the letter B”).

Use grocery shopping to encourage reading
While grocery shopping with preschoolers can be challenging, looking for specific items and brands creates opportunities for children to “read” packages and aisle signs, and match coupons to corresponding products.

Use meal preparation to encourage reading
“Reading” a recipe, whether written or drawn, helps preschoolers learn the left-to-right orientation that is part of a reading experience. Children can also match the written language of recipes with the real materials involved, again helping them understand the relationship between printed material and the objects that the print represents.

The first years of a child’s life provide many wonderful opportunities for parents to cultivate their babies’ basic language and communication skills. Through simple, everyday experiences with language and with warm, loving caregivers, very young children will come to learn the joys of communicating, exchanging ideas and thoughts, and of the written word.

By Sherilyn Goldsmith, M.Ed., University of Minnesota Child Care Center, Minneapolis, Minnesota
Reprinted with permission of the Center for Early Education and Development (CEED), College of Education and Human Development, University of Minnesota, Education Sciences Building, 56 East River Road, Minneapolis, Minnesota, 55455-0223; phone: 612-625-3058; fax: 612-625-2093; e-mail: ceed@umn.edu, web site: http://cehd.umn.edu/ceed

FREE FAMILY PLAY DAY!!!

SATURDAY, APRIL 17, 2010
1pm to 4pm

ULISTAC NATURAL AREA
4901 LICK MILL BLVD
SANTA CLARA, CA 95054

Kids Get Off the Couch Day at the Wild Zone. Come make forts, rock sculptures, new pathways, mud pies and more!

For more info contact:
Jo Seavey- Hultquist
FIRST 5 Santa Clara County
408-260-3720
joanne@first5kids.org