Kiddipedia
Reading with your child from a young age has been proven to give them many benefits and later learning success. It encourages good expression when they learn to read and a love of books. There is so much to talk about when you are reading to your child. Ask your child what the book was about, their favourite character, what things they can see in the picture, and what letters or words they can recognise on the page.
It doesn’t matter how old they are. If they’re babies, they’ll love the sound of your voice. Toddlers… well, any attention is good attention. Then it’s just as important once children are at school. Many parents stop reading to their children once the child can read themselves. Don’t. When you read to your child, they hear the inflections in your voice and the rhythm that you read so that they can emulate it. A primary child’s life is often chaotic, so to spend that time snuggling up and reading a great book is something even a ten-year-old will love.
When reading with your child, do more than just read the words on a page. For smaller people before school, this is pointing out things on a page, things that start with different letters or funny pictures you can see. For a schoolchild, this is talking about what’s happening, what they think will happen next and how it could be relevant to something they’ve experienced in their own lives and the more significant meaning of the story.
If your child is learning to read and always on their levelled books that are a challenge, reading can become an exhaustive chore. Let them pick up an easier book so they can dazzle you with their skills and gain a bit of confidence. If your child is already a fluent reader, encourage them to read fiction and nonfiction books to explore what different texts offer. Encourage children to choose books that they are interested in. A trip to the library can be an excellent learning opportunity for children to explore the books, select the ones they want to borrow, and learn about responsibility as they look after and return the books. (it’s also free) Libraries often have other activities for little people.
Reading is used every day by everybody in everything they do. We use about 100 common words that can be learned by sight. For everything else, children must possess the ability to decode. Knowing the sounds that letters make and putting these sounds together to make the words will help children become competent and fluent readers through decoding. This is called phonemic awareness.
Being exposed to letter sounds, letter shapes, and words and reading from an early age will help give children a head start once they go to school and learn to read. You can make your child aware of the reading process from an early age. Always have something around for them to ‘read’ like board books, television guides, magazines, or novels. Show them how to hold the book the right way up and turn the pages. Often children will make up fantastic stories themselves by looking at the pictures.
From birth to 3 years, there’s a lot of developing and growing in this short amount of time. Your child will go from a tiny baby to a little person with some very definite views on things. During this time, they are absorbing everything! They are learning from the world and the people around them every day. This is the perfect time to start reading with your child. Babies will be drawn to bright colours or contrasting patterns and shapes.
- Start with sturdy cardboard books or bathtime books made of vinyl to let babies explore with their hands and mouths. Even if the book has no words, you can explain the pictures. Point out what’s happening “look at the dog. What sound does the word dog start with? That’s right ‘d’.”
- Simple books on colours, animals and shapes are great for this age.
- You can also move on to simple rhyming books, little ones love them, and you will get sick of them long before they do. Children learn through repetition, and studies have shown that children learn new vocabulary quicker from the repeated reading of the same book. You might even catch them ‘reading’ it themselves, which is fantastic.
- As they get older, you can encourage them to look at the picture and discuss what they think is happening and what they think will happen. “The dogs are running away. What do you think will happen next?”
- Encourage children to choose the books they want to read. This is a great time to make a little book library at home. Having low shelves will let children access the books when they want to.
Between the ages of 3 and 6, children start to learn the names and the sounds of letters. For a beginner, this can be very tricky. b, p, and d are three of the most commonly confused letters as they look so similar. Great sounds to start with are s, a, t, p, i, n
At this early stage, children need to practice all their sounds to begin to build words. Children can look at simple words like mat, pin, cat, and dog in this stage and identify the beginning, middle and end sounds. They can also start to rhyme words and have a simple grasp of comprehension. English is a particularly hard language to learn to read and write. Children spend their first years learning that the letter ‘c’ makes a ‘c’ sound in cake, but then they discover that it makes ‘sss’ in circle and ‘ch’ in chips. To avoid confusion, explain early on that letters sometimes change the sound they make in words.
- Put a couple of letters at a time on the floor, and ask children to run to the card that makes an ‘a’ sound. Ask them to tell you the sound and three or four things that start with that sound, e.g. a is for apple, a is for acrobat, a is for ant. Concentrate on one sound at a time, learn the sound that the letter makes, learn how to write the letter, and talk about things that start with that letter sound. For example, if you are concentrating on ‘a’, go out into the backyard and find some ants, eat some apples and swing around the living room like an acrobat!
- Alphabet Bingo: write sounds onto a piece of cardboard and show children the letters. Then have them tell you the sound and mark it off if they have it.
- Read stories to children and ask them to retell the story.
- Have a picture and ask children to find all the things they can that start with a particular sound.
- Play eye spy as you are driving (you can also use letter sounds to make it easier).
- Let your child cut out pictures that start with the same sound from a magazine and glue them onto paper.
- Talk about sounds in everyday life, when shopping or when you go for a walk. “Let’s get some oranges. What sound do they start with?” At this stage, if they are at the younger end, you might need to help them a little to work it out.
- Talk about the letters and letter sounds in their name. This will be important as they transition to school. Practice making the letter shapes and saying the sounds as they go. Playdough can be great for this!
- Make up silly rhymes and tongue twisters to try.
Remember always to encourage children to try! It is better to have a go and get closer than not to try at all. Use pictures to help with children’s reading, and they often provide clues to the meaning.
Help your child learn to love reading and let them develop one of the essential life skills that they’ll learn. They’ll love you for it and remember you for it too.
Always praise your child’s reading. Our language is a tough one to learn. At the start, it seems like there is so much to remember, and it can often be very overwhelming to children. Praise their efforts for every small achievement they are advancing to the time when they can read without consciously thinking about it. After years of learning and practice, you will feel proud as punch when you see your child do that!
Begin Bright has provided early years, school readiness and primary education programmes for over ten years. With locations across Australia and New Zealand, we incorporate fun games and hands-on activities as we introduce literacy, including phonemic awareness, and numeracy concepts, in a fun and engaging way that kids love, helping them to be happy, smart and confident lifelong learners.
