Early Literacy Tip: Let Your Child See You Read

What children need to know about reading and writing before they can read or write is called early literacy.

As your child’s caregiver, you are their first teacher. The greatest amount of brain growth occurs between birth and age five, a time your child spends with you. By age three, 85% of the brain’s core structure is formed. As a child ages, the brain gets rid of weaker synaptic connections in favor of stronger ones. We can improve the strength of synaptic connections with experiences that reinforce learning that has already occurred.

In our Building Blocks to Early Literacy series, we will share early literacy tips for you to do at home to help your child get ready to learn to read.

Today’s Early Literacy Tip is: Let Your Child See You Read

You are your child’s biggest and most important hero and children naturally want to do what they see their parents do (until they become teenagers but that is a whole different sort of blog) so if they see you reading they will want to emulate you and read themselves.

When a child sees a parent read this encourages Print Motivation – basically, instilling in your child an interest and enjoyment of reading.  When a child is motivated to read it means they will enjoy being read to, enjoy reading on their own and enjoy trips to the library to find new material to read.

One fun way to encourage this love of reading is by reading material written by the same author together. That is not to say you should read your child the latest Tom Clancy but there are plenty of authors nowadays who write books for both adults and for children; some of these authors are listed below. Regardless, there are plenty of similar materials out there that you and your child can read concurrently like magazines, newspapers and eBooks.

Just remember, when your child sees you read, they are inspired to read themselves so be your child’s reading hero. The links below head to our eBook collection on Overdrive. Be sure to filter the results by subject if you want to find the books specifically for kids:

• Terry Pratchett
• James Patterson
• Jane Yolen
• Neil Gaiman
• Isaac Asimov
• Daniel Handler (Lemony Snicket)
• Toni Morrison
• John Grisham
• Alexander McCall Smith