Early Reading First and Reading First
If you have a preschooler at home, this interesting information via TravelingToLiteracy might alert you. According to researchers, reading is a learned skill rather than an endowment.
“PROVEN METHODS: Early Reading First and Reading First”
How can we, as parents, help our preschoolers to acquire reading skills as early as they can?
Here are the tips :
- Set a reading time in daily schedule for ten to fifteen minutes. It depends on how long your preschooler can hold his/her attention.
- Make it a fun time or a getting together time. Your preschooler would better respond and ready to read when you sit close to him/her. Have your child hold something he/she likes, e.g. his/her favorite blanket or toys as you read.
- Emphasize rhythms and rhymes in stories. Ask your preschooler to follow you and repeat rhyming phrases. Put it in a way you are playing a game with him/her.
- Choose and read those books that interest your preschooler, like cars, animals or cartoons. Find some books with fun, like silly people/animals doing silly things. Give your preschooler a chance to choose his/her own books for reading.
- Read with expression using different voices for different characters.
- Read the written words, but occasionally at appropriate place, stop for a while and discuss the pictures and help your preschooler relate to the story. Ask questions about the pictures or ask him/her to point out pictured objects that are alike and different in shape and in colour. This will help your child build up his/her observation skills spotting the different shapes of letters and words.
- Read his/her favourite stories again and again. Younger children enjoy repetition. The words and structure of stories will sink in.
- Expand their real life experience in order to enrich his/her reading ability. When you take your child to a park, a zoo, you can teach him/her names of animals or colours of flowers. Your child will easily understand the words printed in books and make more sense to them.