In “Coffee With Karine,” we are exploring together the ideas around a LearnForward family. How do we come to the table together to support the development of lifelong learners? The second critical perspective in supporting children to #LearnForward: literacy.
Last week, we discussed the idea of conversation in our home. It’s a pretty easy leap from language to literacy. We talk…a lot and read lots too!
The best way I’ve found to incorporate reading into our family is right from the start, routinely, and interest-based. In other words, trying to balance adaptability with routine and structure.
Baby G (the 2-year old), well she has a bed-time story each night. At this point, she usually gets to choose, although sometimes I introduce something new. We sit in the rocker with the book basket next to us. It is an absolute must in her bed-time routine. If we don’t have this time of closeness and connection, she is sure to struggle in falling asleep.
In Carl Honore’s books In Praise of Slowness, he divulges his watershed moment of realizing his rush when he couldn’t slow down enough to read a bed-time story with his son without skipping pages and hurrying to “get-it-over-with.” It struck me that we need to take time, on so many levels, for this important ritual in our homes.
However, the toddler doesn’t just get a bed-time story. Literacy is built through two pre-requisite skills, the alphabetic principle and phonemic awareness. Those are teacher terms for she needs to know the letters and the sounds letters make. She has magnetic letters, block letters, a zoo full of alphabet animals, and alphabet books. She has a journal of scribbles, jars and bags of pens and colours, and magazines. She watches Sesame Street and Super Why! and has the coordinating apps on the iPad. We point out letters, play with sounds, and quiz her using t-shirts.
It’s literally a menagerie of literacy!
It’s never forced. We make it play. It’s magical and adventurous!
Over time, we trust that it will grow into something more. With the big kids, I had an emergent reader who sounded out each work painstakingly and another who needed to read it perfectly the first time. The latter route proved to be the longer one to enjoying reading for pleasure. Whatever the case may be, it can be a bumpy path.
Not all approaches are equal and not all children respond the same. One of my children relates how “it was torture when you made me read a novel before watching t.v. one summer.”
But, it really is all about interest. Supporting them until they find it. The 16-year old recently reflected, “I started to like reading when I found books that interested me.” That was in about Grade 5. She just bought Gone With the Wind for our family vacation.
We try not to put boundaries around what the kids will read. Over the years, there were comic books, magazines, and fiction or non-fiction of all varieties. Even still, Christmas and birthdays include gifts of “something to read” for each of them. Fortunately, family and friends have always supported and valued literacy too! We read in all different combinations, with, around, and to each other. We use the library! We default to the school’s reading program! We make vacations a time to purchase a special book to read along the way.
Some ideas for early readers include:
- read to your child
- read chorally with your child
- take turns page-by-page reading to each other
- memorize books together
- track the words as you read them
- ask them questions about how they “connect” with the story or what they can “guess” about why something is happening or what will happen next
Finally, don’t beat yourself up about what you aren’t doing. We don’t read every night. I haven’t hit my personal reading goal of 50 books per year. One child is reading more from blogs than the classics. It’s okay. At this later stage of mommy-ing I realize, I can be more gentle, relax into it, and take a long-term perspective.
Gently offering a menagerie of literacy creates a long-term love affair with reading!