Mind: Encouraging Literacy in Your Child
Photo by Andrew Ebrahim on Unsplash
The PHAC Nobody’s Perfect program has produced a downloadable two-page tip sheet on reading together with children as a means of developing literacy skills.
Mind: Encouraging Literacy in Your Child offers background on the value of reading and writing skills both as keys to learning and as a means of developing initiative and self-esteem in children.
· Being read to shows your child things in the world they may never see, like other countries or people or machines. This helps stretch your child’s imagination.
· Books with emotions can teach about anger and happiness.
· Books with people interacting can teach about sharing and respect.
· Talking about what is happening in the story gives you a chance to spend time together, laugh, feel sad, and learn about each other. These are great memories your child will have.
For parents who may feel uncomfortable getting started with reading to their child, the sheet gives suggestions, e.g. using different voices, using gestures and sound effects, etc.
The second page of the tip sheet provides a number of suggestions for fun and easy activities to incorporate reading together into family routines. These are grouped for babies (0 – 12 months), toddlers (1 – 3 years) and preschoolers, and include ideas as well for expanding reading together activities as confidence and mutual enjoyment grow, such as making your own story and drawing pictures to illustrate it, using magnetic letter on a fridge to leave messages such as “I love you”, or either making up songs or playing the ‘rhyme game’ using your child’s name.
The Canadian Paediatric Society offers a range of supports for early literacy on their website at https://www.cps.ca/en/strategic-priorities/literacy These include:
· Practice tools and guidelines
· Information for sharing with parents and caregivers, including:
o Reading to Your Baby: How parents can promote literacy from birth (bilingual brochure)
o Video – Read, Speak, Sing: Your baby and early literacy
o Video – Read, Speak, Sing: Fun ideas for you and your baby
o Blog: Why It’s Never Too Early to Start Reading with Your Kids
o A variety of book lists for reading with young children
· Related issues: early childhood development resources
· Sources and resources, including:
o Read, Speak, Sing - Early Literacy listserv: With the guidance of literacy champion Dr. Alyson Shaw, the CPS has launched a listserv (email discussion group) to encourage conversation and idea-sharing about how to support and promote early childhood literacy in health settings. To join, send a blank email to the link above.
o The Early Childhood Education Report
o Lire/Imagine/Read: Literacy promotion project at the Montreal Children’s Hospital
o Reach Out and Read: A U.S. program that promotes early literacy by giving new books to children and advice to parents about the importance of reading aloud.