If you have a child in your life and you want to help that child learn to read, I understand if you don’t know where to start. Michelle Valene understands, too. She published What Children Need to Learn to READ to give parents that little manual they’ve always wanted…at least, for teaching reading. Complete with developmental checklists, simple activities, fun songs and poems, and a cd of rhymes and songs, this book is a great resource for parents and teachers alike. Check out Learners Lane for more information. You are probably doing a lot of these activities and might not realize the impact they have on your child’s developing literacy skills. This book makes reading fun and exciting for kids. They don’t even know that they are learning!
It’s empowering to know that I am my child’s best resource for learning to read. Honestly, it’s kind of intimidating too. The good news is, there’s really nothing you can do to mess it up-except to do nothing. People are always asking my husband and me what we did to get our daughter reading at an early age. We truly didn’t do anything except read to her, read with her, and read around her. A lot. That’s just the way we roll. I have been known to read the car manual when bored in the car. I just read anything and everything. We bought hundreds of books at yard sales and took her to the library and bookstores. She saw our love for those places and found it in herself to love reading, too. As an infant, she watched us turn pages of picture books and listened to the cadence of voice as she heard the story. Later, she recognized pictures and associated them with experiences. She memorized books before she read. She sang along to the sing-along cd’s that came with books. Her preschool teachers labeled the items and furniture around her classroom. We didn’t realize it at the time, but all of these steps helped her to be a strong reader, ready to comprehend difficult text and to decode challenging words. Now that her younger brother is here, he has even more opportunity to read because she loves reading with him.
This post contains affiliate links.
It really is true that teaching literacy starts with you, and you are the heart of it. Reading to and with your child is important. It’s great that she reads to him, too. Make reading a family activity for all to learn and bond.