As a parent, you want to help your child succeed in school. But what if you don’t know how to help your child, especially when it comes to early literacy? Perhaps you’ve tried to get your child interested in reading, but no matter how hard you try, your child just won’t sit still long enough for you to get through even just one book. Maybe you find yourself letting your child have too much screen time throughout the day, and even when you have the best of intentions, you end up handing your child the iPad and letting them play educational videos or games just to keep the peace. And while these educational resources can be helpful especially for older kids, the little ones need limited screen time and more opportunities for hands-on, active play. For young children, play is how they learn. So, what are some practical ways you can set up your child’s environment to encourage active, creative play that will lead to your child’s love of learning and success in school?
Books, Books, and More Books
That’s right, books! But it’s more than just having lots of books around the house; finding quality, age-appropriate books that are of interest to your child and setting them up in a way that they are easily accessible and aesthetically pleasing will go a long way in piquing your child’s interest.
Infants/Toddlers: Board books are best for this age. It’s even better if you can find some board books with touch and feel elements. Here is a list of some high-quality board books just to get you started:
Noisy Farm, by Patricia Hegarty (2020 Little Tiger Press Ltd.)
Babies Love Colors: Lift-a-Flap Book, by Michelle Rhodes Conway and Fhiona Galloway (2018 Cottage Door Press, LLC)
Find the Duck, by Felicity Brooks, Stephen Cartwright, and Meg Dobbie (2007 Usborne Publishing, Ltd.)
Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See?, by Bill Martin Jr and Eric Carle (2016 Henry Holt and Company)
Preschoolers: Preschoolers may still look at some board books, but they are ready to move on to picture books. Picture books with large, colorful pictures, interesting stories, and rhyming words are very beneficial for young children’s early literacy skills to grow. You can read these books aloud to your child, using different character voices and getting your child involved in the story by asking questions or having your child say certain repetitive lines that come up throughout the book.
Here are some high-quality picture book that are perfect for preschoolers:
Goldilocks and the Three Bears, Retold by Sue Graves (2010 Parragon Books Ltd)
Soup Day, by Melissa Iwai (2010 Scholastic Inc.)
The View at the Zoo, by Kathleen Long Bostrom and Guy Francis (2015 WorthyKids Hachette Book Group)
Click, Clack, Moo: Cows That Type, by Doreen Cronin and Betsy Lewin (2000 Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers)
Kindergartners and up: These older children are just beginning to learn to read. They will definitely benefit from you reading aloud to them from picture books, especially ones that include a good range of vocabulary words and provide opportunities for discussing the story. Asking both literal questions as well as questions where your child has to use context from the story to infer the answer will help your child’s listening and reading comprehension skills. In addition to reading aloud to your child, you can provide decodable passages for your child to practice reading on their own. Decodable passages are simply short books that only include the phonics patterns your child has already learned (for example, a good decodable passage for a rising first grader who knows letter sounds, can blend letter sounds to make short, 1-syllable words, and understands the concept of a sentence, may focus primarily on high frequency words and CVC, or consonant-vowel-consonant, words).
Here are some great read-aloud picture books as well as resources for decodable passages you can find for your kindergartner or first grader:
Don’t Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus, by Mo Willems (2003 Hyperion Books for Children)
Elephant & Piggie Books (a series!), also by Mo Willems (Scholastic Inc.)
The Princess in Black, by Shannon and Dean Hale and LeUyen Pham (2015 Candlewick Press)
Decodable Passages: You can find free decodable passages for your early readers on the Readworks Website: https://www.readworks.org/
Active, Hands-On, Imaginative Play
In addition to having plenty of opportunities for your child to explore high-quality, age-appropriate books, it’s equally important to give your child plenty of time for play. You probably already have everything you need to encourage pretend play! You really don’t need a lot of toys with lots of sound, lights, or gadgets. The simpler the better, especially when it comes to toys for young children. Dolls, stuffed animals, toy food, and blocks, just to name a few, can provide hours of opportunities for open-ended pretend play. One way to encourage your child to retell a familiar story, for example, is to have them act it out with dolls or stuffed animals. They can add their own new elements to the story or make up their own stories as well. Ask them questions about what is happening in their pretend scenarios. Listen carefully, and see where you can facilitate further learning in their play; but also don’t force it. Children won’t be as willing to engage if they feel you are forcing them to “do school.” See what comes up organically, and extend learning opportunities as you see fit.
Loose Parts and Open-Ended Art
This may surprise you, but a wonderful avenue for extended learning for young children includes providing them with open-ended materials such as loose parts and art supplies. Loose parts can be anything you can find around your house or even outside in nature. For example, you can go outside and collect rocks, sticks, twigs, leaves, pinecones, acorns, grass, shells, seeds, or feathers. You can use recycled materials from your house, such as bottle caps, corks, fabric scraps, ribbons, empty spools, beads, and buttons. For containers and scoops, you can use baskets, trays, tins, jars, buckets, boxes, small pots and pans, funnels, measuring cups, or spoons. For sensory play, sand, water beads, rice, shaving cream, playdough, cloud dough, or kinetic sand can be used. Cardboard tubes, paper towel rolls, paper plates, and small cardboard boxes can also be useful for playing with loose parts. The possibilities are endless! Loose parts can be used for play as well as in open-ended art projects. Washable, non-toxic art materials such as finger paint, tempera paint, watercolors, crayons, and markers can be used to create amazing art that your child will enjoy making and take pride in their efforts.
So there you go! These are all ways to get your kids excited about learning that will effectively help them learn the early literacy skills they need in order to start reading. I hope you got a few great ideas to try with your young child today!
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