**This is a guest blog post by CMF and SCP Sponsor, Charlotte Speech and Hearing**
This is the first of a series of entries about developing literacy with your child. Each section will focus on a different age group. You will also read some ways to make your child’s reading and writing experiences more effective – and enjoyable!
There are many infomercials promising that you can teach your baby to read. While these claims are tempting, they aren’t exactly cheap and they haven’t been proven to work. Outside of those ads, though, there is great news. The best tool to develop love of literacy in your child is free – it’s YOU! No computer program, DVD series, or interactive toy is better than interacting with your child.
So why read to babies? Many parents experience their infants chewing on books, or their toddlers only wanting to look at one page of one book. It’s these types of encounters with books that make parents think, “Maybe I should wait to read with them until they’re old enough to enjoy it.” The truth is, these are appropriate behaviors in the period called “Emergent Literacy”. The great experiences babies have with books (and with you) will give them the skills needed to start reading later – skills like recognizing what a book is, looking at pictures, holding it the right way, turning pages, and understanding a story.
Shared reading experiences are especially exciting because they develop language. Of the most common 1,000 words in the English language, most of the words your baby hears spoken will be a very small number of those words. Reading, however, introduces many more of those 1,000 words. Words like “became” or “ocean” will be found in plenty of children’s books, but not so often in conversations with little ones. It can take many, many times of hearing a word before a child understands its meaning, so the more you read, the more words your baby will learn! Research tells us that when parents read often to their little ones, by age 2 those children will know many more words than children whose parents didn’t read.
Whether you have been reading with your infant or toddler for months, or you’re ready to give it a go, here are some ideas to enrich your experience even more!
• Use books that are slobber-friendly. Using “board books”, or the books with stiff, cardboard pages, or cloth books that won’t fold and tear like paper will give little ones the freedom to bang, drop, stack, and chew away!
• Read “outside the box”. Text in baby books is simple. Feel free to use your own words, sound effects and even motions to bring the book to life.
• Use a variety of language. As you read, try to use a combination of object names (house, dog, baby), actions (crying, saying, running), and descriptions (wet, fuzzy, blue, circle).
• Encourage interaction. Books that have things to touch or flaps to open and close are especially engaging. Touching and manipulating pages makes the experience even more exciting and meaningful for your baby.
• Become an author! Books for babies don’t need words, just pictures. You can make a “book” in the form of a digital slideshow or a printed photo album. Add pictures of family members or recent experiences. Who doesn’t like to read about people they know? (The picture above is from pintsizeproductions.com)
• Make it a routine. Build a book into at least one activity a day. As your child gets older, it will be something they look forward to and come to expect. Bedtime is a great place to start. Other book times might be after playtime or before naps.
• Focus on what you both enjoy. Don’t feel you need to read multiple books or even finish a whole story. Spending a few minutes talking about the page or pages you and your baby like the most will build plenty of interest.
• Relax! While it’s important to introduce literacy to infants and toddlers, making it an enjoyable experience is the top priority. If your baby is feeling especially squirmy or fussy about reading a book, try again a little later when his or her mood might be better.
The relationship between your baby and books is closely linked to your baby’s relationship with you. Not only is reading a time to learn new words and develop more communication, it’s a time to be close with one another and yet one more way your child can learn from you. Your child will grow to follow what you do more than what you say. When your child sees you reading often and you show your love of reading, he or she will be more likely to grow up to follow your example! Not only is reading a time to learn new words and develop more communication, it’s a time to be close with one another. Have fun beginning a life-long journey of discovering literacy together!
For more information on Charlotte Speech and Hearing Center, please visit our website:
www.charlottespeechhearing.com
Leave a Reply