In all honesty actual reading isn’t on top of my priority list at the moment, well not for Aidan at least.
He will be three soon and I don’t expect him to be reciting sonnets, but I do want him to love books and reading. There is something so special/magical/uplifting about being able to immerse yourself in the written word. Also you can then use sentences like “immerse yourself in the written word” quite successfully-hehe.
Right now I’m working on helping Aidan recognise letters of the alphabet, he is pretty much only interested in the letter A because A is for Aidan.
Here are 6 tips/games I’m using to get Aidan more interested in the other letters…
– I let him trace the letters using colourful stones or beads
– We play a treasure hunting game where we collect pictures (he loves taking pics) of objects that start with a specific letter… ants, apples, antelope (we don’t have antelope or artichokes) he suggested a picture of himself and of this blonde haired Aidan he met once.
– I let him go through my old magazines with a highlighter looking for specific letters
– I let him colour/paint/collage (you know this means tear off paper and haphazardly glue onto letter right?) the letter of the week
– I use things like scabble or bananagram tiles and have him pick out the letter of the week
– At the end of the week I want to give him a felt letter signaling that he knows that letter now (just thought of that now-don’t you just hate me… we are heading to C now so I better get working on that)
We also read pretty regularly, very regularly. The Kid’sBookClub means we are building quite the collection. The service gives you the chance to build up a library that grows with your kid at the steal of R145 per month. That is two books and two magazines which is AWESOME.
Any more tips on raising a reader???? DO SHARE!
Personally I think you do not need to concentrate too much on letters etc at the moment. In our grade 1 reading meeting at school they always give the 3 rules that make great readers:
1. Read to your child every day – even when they can read themselves. Make it a together social moment of the day. Something you share.
2. Let them see you read and enjoy it. Give them a book to read (or page through when they can not yet read) while you read. Make it a routine and acceptable activity in the house rather than say watching tv or being on a tablet.
3. As soon as they learn to read let them read to you every day.
I love this and In implementing it straight away 🙂 Aidan is obsessed with numbers and letters-letters – it is all he ever asks me to draw so I'm capitalising hehe… but love those tips
My hopes too for my blonde haired Aidan 🙂
Take them to the library to choose books too – they usually have lovely selections… and if they ask about something, invite them to research it with you by getting a book out from the library. I know we can just look it up, but I find that getting a book about a topic often leads you onto other topics, in a way that Internet research can't quite match. Some of my fondest times as a kid involved sitting paging through National Geographic Magazines on my parents' shelf.
The other thing I do with my 4 and 7 year old is read non-picture books to them, so that they learn about reading and imagination, rather than reading as 'subtitles' to a picture book. So like the original Winnie-the-pooh books are great, and we are currently reading through the Chronicles of Narnia series. It is a little bit of a challenge for my youngest, but I stop and explain difficult moments or words, and they beg me to read it every night – one chapter at a time.
Oh, and I also put subtitles on when they do watch kids programs (Yay for netflix!) I'm not sure if they have made the connection yet, but I know it has helped me learn other languages… so I'm sure it could help them learn English reading too 🙂
Really? That's so simple but effective… don't know if it would work with me as I can't even understand if I'm watching Afrikaans and reading English – and I can speak both fluently!!!
I was very lazy with this but we always have loads and loads of books everywhere in the house. My mom was a librarian so she reads a lot to the kids when we are there. My kids always have a book though, even the little ones. I am not saying just leaving the books lying around is the answer but exposure is some of the battle won 🙂