Parents as Partners: Helping Your Child Learn to Read and Write
Give your child the gift of a lifelong love of writing and reading
because you are
the most important teacher your child will ever have.
Helping your child learn to read and write:
- Sing, talk and read with your child throughout the day – build the oral language that will support them as good readers, writers and speakers.
- Memorize many nursery rhymes, poems, songs, chants and story excerpts. The child who enters school knowing at least 100 of these wonderful expressions has a lifelong educational advantage.
- Teach your child the ABC Phonics: Sing, Sign, and Read! by Nellie Edge and engage them in games signing and naming letters and sounds. See free online ABC Phonics instructional video clips. (Magnetic letters can go on the refrigerator or on a metal cookie sheet.) Post the Family Reference Chart on your refrigerator for nightly review.
- Write with your child – let them see you writing cards, grocery lists and notes. Talk out loud about what you are doing and show the child that writing is an important part of your life and that it brings you pleasure.
Writing teaches reading and reading teaches writing.
- Have a message center in your kitchen on a bulletin board or the refrigerator where you leave notes for your child and where your child leaves notes and pieces of art. Read these together. (Remember, scribbles and drawings are children’s first writing.)
- Encourage your child to write his name efficiently. Practice doing it together. Soon he will also learn to write “I love you.” Show your pleasure in his writing development.
Make sure your child is enjoying any learning activity. Stop if your child is
frustrated or seems disinterested. Keep the desire to learn and family joy strong.
- Celebrate and encourage your child’s “kid writing.” You will be amazed at how they develop their control of phonetic spellings and how quickly they learn high-frequency words. (We call these “heart words.”)
- Help your child send cards and notes to friends. Find an “auntie” or neighbor who will send real letters to your child through the mail.
- Gather your child’s writing and art into memory books. Talk about your child as an author and illustrator. (An 8 ½" x 11" notebook with clear plastic sheet protectors or magnetic pages is an easy way to organize writing and art and document growth.)
- Encourage your child to be a storyteller. Keep a clipboard handy to write down your child’s stories or descriptions of experiences. Put a date on them. Read them back to your child. Encourage your child to draw pictures and to illustrate their story.
- In preschool and kindergarten, your child will continue developing their reading and writing skills. Encourage them; celebrate their emerging attempts just like you did their first attempts at speaking.
- Encourage your child to develop their art and small muscle skills by drawing, using playdough, building with small toys and learning American Sign Language. If possible, build or purchase an easel so the child can use large movements to paint or draw.
- Take walks with your child to awaken their love of nature. Talk about trees and birds and changes in nature. Exercise the body and the mind together.
- Keep a nature journal and draw pictures and write about the seasons or about changes in your garden. Encourage your child to do the same.
- Help your child make labels for things in your home. Make a name sign, which the child decorates, for his room.
- Write dinner menus, telephone messages, and keep photo journals of family trips. Read them with your child.
- Eat dinner together – talk about favorite books or things you’ve read. Make it a family tradition that after dinnertime is your “family learning together time.” (Television is no substitute for authentic family time.)
- Write descriptions to accompany family photo albums. Read them to your child.
- Keep a personal journal of thoughts and reflections. Give your child a blank book journal to write in. Ask if they would like to read their journal to you and have you respond.
- Make folded Little Books for your child to write in.
- Fingerpaint letters and words on trays using shaving cream or chocolate pudding. Make shapes in cornmeal or saltboxes.
- Look for letters and familiar signs and labels while going for walks in the neighborhood (stop sign), driving in the car (McDonald’s), or eating breakfast (Cheerios).
- Read, read, read to your child every day – throughout the day. Snuggle in bed with books at night. Read favorite predictable books over and over again until your child has memorized and can “magically read” the entire book. Read beautiful and delightful picture books over and over until you have memorized the entire book. Read information picture books to expand your child’s world. Read the Bible, read Shakespeare, read poetry, read things that you cherish. Hug books and hug your child. Soon your child will be reading to you.
Keep your special learning times joyful, positive and relaxed.
Remember you are building a lifelong love for reading and writing and learning.
Permission is granted for reproduction by schools using the “Parents as Partners” in Kindergarten and Early Literacy Book and Program by Nellie Edge ©2011. Written permission is required to reproduce for sale or distribution to other agencies.
