| Raising a Reader at Home
Raising a Reader at Home
Raising a Reader - Birth through Age 3
- Read aloud from the moment you bring your new baby home from the hospital.
- Create a place in your home for reading. Both adults and children need
special places to keep their books and to curl up and read. Respect this
need and encourage your children to learn how to spend time independently
with books as well as care for their own books.
- Read books that ask questions; read books that teach direction, numbers,
time, and opposites; and read books that teach words and ideas. Every book
you read is a teaching opportunity.
- Give your baby time to look at the pictures, which should be held about
eight to ten inches from her face.
- Obtain a public library card for your child and as soon as she is old
enough, begin taking her to library story hours. Many libraries offer
pajama party story hours for working families.
- Create a special family tradition by giving books for birthdays and
Christmas gifts. Inscribe a special message in the front cover of the book
and affix a bookplate that says "When I Was Five" (or whatever the age).
During the year paste birthday cards, postcards, awards, or pictures in
various places in the books that commemorate the year's happenings. As your
children get older, they can write short descriptions to go with the
mementoes. By the time your child graduates from high school she will have
3 dozen special books filled with remembrances.
Raising a Reader - Ages 4-7
- Read aloud every single day!
- Play rhyme, rhythm, and sound games with your child. Look for objects in
pictures or around the house that begin with a specific letter of the
alphabet.
- Allow your child to select some of his/her own books to check out at the
public library. Don't discourage your child from choosing a book you've
already read or even checked out the week before. Children like to hear
favorites read over and over.
- Make a jigsaw puzzle from the dust jacket of a book, a large photo, or a
favorite poster. Laminate it on a thin cardboard at the copy store and then
cut it into odd shapes. Your child will enjoy homemade puzzles more than
those you purchase in the store. You can even use a picture of grandma and
grandpa or cousins who live far away to make the puzzle.
- Make a recipe taken from one of your child's favorite books. Try green eggs
and ham for your first culinary triumph (Green Eggs and Ham by Dr. Seuss)
or an angel food cake using the recipe in High Rise Glorious Skittle Skat
Roarious Sky Pie Angel Food Cake by Nancy Willard. You can also check out
simple recipe books and make snacks or lunches together.
- Buy some puppets and encourage your children to create their own puppet
shows for the family.
- Provide writing materials and give your children an opportunity to create
their own stories. They may have to explain them to you since the
scribbles will frequently be unintelligible to an adult.
Raising Readers - Ages 8-12
- Keep on reading aloud. Have a book for dessert instead of pie and ice cream!
- Encourage your child to write thank you notes for gifts received and
special events to which she has been invited.
- Require outside reading from your children even if their teachers don't.
Middle grade students need to read between 35 and 45 books per year just to
keep up with learning the vocabulary they will need to become literate
adults. Turn off the tv and read. Set aside time each day for your child to
read on her own. This is a particularly important thing to do during summer
vacations when children have more time and need to keep their reading
skills up to speed.
- Subscribe to magazines that interest your child.
- Play word games like Scrabble and Boggle with your children and introduce
them to crossword puzzles.
- Be open-minded and receptive to your children's ideas. Listen with interest
to your children's questions, ideas, and suggestions. Your respect for your
child's mind will be appreciated and become the basis for a lifelong
closeness.
- Help your child write a book review for one his favorite books and post it
on amazon.com for the world to read. Make sure you proofread it together
for grammar and spelling correctness.
- Publish a family or neighborhood newsletter. This is an especially good
project for the summertime.
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