Help Your Child
Get Ready to Read!
Parents are a child's first teacher.
The most
important thing parents can do is talk and read to their children. During
the toddler and preschool years it is critical to provide children with many
different language and reading experiences that are playful and fun, to
include nursery rhymes and rhyming games to expose youngsters to the sounds
of language.
Reading early and often prepares children for life.
A child who has been read to from a young age:
-
Is better
prepared to learn to read once they enter school.
-
Has heard more
than 30 million words by age 3 and has a vocabulary
of 20,000 words by age 6.
-
The average
middle-class first grader has been read to more than 1,250 hours.
For some children in low-income families, the comparable figure is 25
hours.
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Six
Skills Your Child Needs
to be a successful reader
The American
Library Association, Public Library Association, National Research Council, Ohio Library Council, and
the State Library of Ohio have identified these six key early literacy skills that will
prepare children to become readers when they enter school, that serve as
the foundation for learning to read and write.
Click
on a skill below to find reading suggestions and fun activities
to share
with your child. Follow the links above to find suggestions by
age level.
-
Find books that spark your child's interests and
share them often
-
Sing Songs, play games, and share rhymes to help
you child play with the smaller sounds in words
-
Tell stories together, encourage pretend play, and
let your child be the storyteller.
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Teach your child the specific names of things
(like items at the grocery store and animals you see in the backyard).
Explain unfamiliar words in books instead of skipping over them or
substituting an easier word.
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Print Awareness
Noticing print everywhere, knowing how to handle a book, and
following words on a page.
Help your child discover
how to hold a book and turn the pages.
-
Letter Knowledge
Knowing the difference between how letters look, their names, and
their sounds.
Help find the letter that
your child's name begins with. Point out words and letters on street
signs, on package labels, and in books.
Helpful
Websites:
PBS Parents How a child develops year-by-year in various
areas.
Parents as Teachers
Learn how important it is to read together to build early literacy.
Zero to Three For parents to learn about brain development, early
language and literacy, child development.
Learning and Growing Together
Sponsored by the Ohio Department of Education, Office of School
Readiness. For families, this site includes a series of fun and practical
online resources.
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