Did you know
Goodnight Moon,
Make Way for Ducklings and
Charlotte's Web each contain all 44 sounds of the English language? Reading together is a lifetime gift you will give to your child. It is more precious than gold, and it is free. Start turning new pages and give your child the best chance at success by taking the time to instill him or her with a solid base for a lasting love of stories, books and reading.
As Jim Trelease points out,
'the one skill that matters above all is the child's vocabulary because it is a prime predictor of a child's success or failure in school.'
Early reading is not a chore, but rather a way for your child to score higher in school.
Story telling has been around since the beginning of time and it's how teachers communicate with children in kindergarten and elementary school. In the first four grades of a child's education, oral communication is a must for teaching and consequently, for learning. Most children are
learning to read through the third grade, after that, the emphasis on oral teaching switches to
reading to learn and it is hard for a child to make up the difference in vocabulary if it has not already been attained.
Studies show that children who are exposed to repeated meaningful sentences and questions will most likely have acquired a significant amount of vocabulary upon entering kindergarten. So forget the baby-talk, your kids will be smarter for it! Propping a child in front of the television does not help to build their vocabulary either, and in fact, is more harmful than meaningful.
Reading chapter books, without pictures, is very beneficial and engages the brain in new ways by allowing the child to formulate thoughts and visualize his or her own pictures. Remember that a child can be read aloud to at a level or two higher than he or she can read alone. The more you read together, the more vocabulary your child will have in his or her word arsenal by the time they start school.
I remember sitting in the hallway between my children's bedrooms and reading to them from classics like
The Three Musketeers and
James and the Giant Peach. The four of them, two years apart, learned and built their vocabularies by listening to the language around them. My husband was famous for storytelling and created a whole series which he tailored specifically to the kids. He named the stories
The Golden Children, and they still remember those stories to this day! It is easier for a child to retain new information when it is framed in a meaningful story.
It is gratifying when I see them doing the same with their own children, which I enjoy a whole lot more than the one am phone call from their college dorm asking me to listen to something they had written for class. Pay back is, well, it's rich! The sleep interruption was worth knowing I had passed down something priceless which they are now passing on to my grand children.
According to a study done by Hart and Risley, the discrepancy along socio-economic lines is quite large. They found that all parents love and want the best for their children, but the difference was how much vocabulary a child was exposed to in the course of two years, from seven months to age two-and-a-half. After recording and transcribing any conversations and actions taking place in front of the child, 23 million bytes of information was collected, including every noun, verb, and adjective that was spoken. It was determined that children from professional families had an average of 45 million words already in their vocabulary vault, as opposed to children in working class families with 26 million and children in families below the poverty line with 13 million, by the time they started school.
How much of what a child understands is based largely on vocabulary. In elementary school most of the learning is done through oral instruction. Once a child starts to read, that vocabulary will either help or hinder comprehension. And a child and parent will experience bonding and develop an emotional closeness by identifying with the character's feelings in the stories.
Dr. Kevin Dwyer, President of the National Academy of School Psychologists, says 'reading aloud is a violence prevention program.' I agree. A child's ability to communicate and comprehend is dependent on language and is directly related to a child's ability to experience success in all realms. A feeling of success leads to a feeling of confidence and a feeling of confidence leads to a happier life and happy people commit less violence.
The ABC's of reading to a very young child can be remembered more easily if you follow the three simple rules below:
A. Always read with and to your child whenever possible.
B. Bring books out into your child's view in the home and make them accessible at all times. Give your child a book to take along when you go places, like the supermarket, the doctor's office, or even a restaurant.
C. Choose stories for your home library by visiting the public library often and remembering to read aloud from books a level or two above what a child can read alone.
Robert at the Lunenburg Public Library
Books I recommend:
1. Tell Me a Story by Roger C. Shank
2. The Read Aloud Handbook by Jim Trelease
3. The Princess Bride: S. Morgenstern's Classic Tale of True Love and High Adventure: The Good Parts Version Abridged, 25th Anniversary ed. (New York: Ballantine, 2000)
Good Luck! Good Parenting!
Bon :)
* Photo Courtesy of Penny Goguen Cole (Top)
