How Parents Can Prepare Their Children For Reading Before They Enter School

(Extracted from Butler and Clay)

·          Expose your child to print in the natural course of the day, point out signs, labels and other environmental print.” ·          Allow your child to see you reading books, as well as magazines and newspapers. ·           Share letters from family members with your child so they begin to understand written communication. ·           Visit the Post Office and allow children to take an active part. ·           Allow your child to make discoveries with magnetic letters on a cookie sheet. ·           Provide appropriate challenges for your preschoolers as very few children learn to read without some struggle.  (Example: jigsaw puzzles that get progressively more difficult.) ·           Read to your child daily.  There is no substitute for reading and telling  stories. ·           Limit television time.  As television leads so easily to passive acceptance, questions cannot be answered by the TV set and so they are not asked.    BIBLIOGRAPHY FOR PARENTS   Title                    Author               Publisher   Babies Need Books     Dorothy Butler  Atheneum A Parent’s Guide to Children’s Reading   Nancy Larrick  Doubleday The Read-Aloud Handbook    Jim Trelease  Viking/Penguin How Children Learn     John Holt  Dell Learning To Read     Margaret Meek  Heinemann Family Storybook Reading    Danny Taylor  Heinemann Learning Through Play     Jean Marzollo  Harper & Row How to Play With Your Child (And When Not To)  B. & S. Sutton-Smith Dutton