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 Teaching Early Literacy Skills to Your Young Child

Introduce “Early Literacy” to your young child in a natural and creative manner. By exposing your child to literacy from the very early stages of life, you can instill the love of books while your precious one learns many pre-reading and reading skills simultaneously.  Just by sharing a book with your young child, you are teaching him/her the correct way to hold a book and how to turn the pages. And when you read the same book over and over, he/she is learning where to start and end the book. These are just some of the many pre-reading skills that can begin on day one.

There are so many educational opportunities when using The Attachable Photo Albums with your child. When introducing the My Family book, begin by pointing to the “Me” page and then recite the baby’s name. Continue to point to photos and identify family members.  From there, the opportunities to elicit language and vocabulary about family members are endless. Each page was carefully developed by teachers to maximize the learning experience.  For example, there is a color and object word on each page. There are also enough objects on the borders to be counted by you and your child. Once your child has attained the skills previously mentioned, the sticker page in the back of the book with family member titles can be used.  From there, the child learns how to recognize family name sight words such as “father” and “mother.”  Consequently, reading skills begin to emerge.  Best of all, because these books can be attached to strollers, shopping carts, diaper bags, backpacks, etc., learning opportunities can happen anywhere you go with your young child.  The more you expose your child to books and reading, the more natural and enjoyable the learning process will be.

Written by Rysia Grossman-2008