A couple of interesting reading facts to consider:
- 71% of parents feel reading is a vital skill, yet only 31% of kids read for fun 5-7 day each week.
- While we teach kids to walk, talk and eat and practice sports, we seldom get involved in helping them learn their letters and numbers. (If you do, congrats; you’re ahead of most parents!)
By waiting until kids get into school, we’re missing out on building up their interest in words and books; in literacy. So how can we get involved?
Try these ideas:
- Talk about and read books and stories.
- Look up words that interest kids as well as words found in their stories and homework.
- Read aloud to introduce kids to stories with high interest and vocabulary beyond their current skill level.
- Include lots of non-fiction. It has a high degree of interest for most students and also builds their “working/usable vocabulary”.
- Share jokes, word searches/puzzles, news articles and magazines, even cookbooks that have interesting kid-information.
- Check out books, etc. from the library.
Join in school book sales and student book exchanges to help kids build their personal libraries.
**The key is to know kids’ interests and locate materials that keep them reading and expanding their literacy.