Read With Your Preschooler!
Your preschooler is almost ready to read! You can help your child prepare by continuing to read aloud from favorite books and by introducing new books. Children who are read to become better readers. In addition to picture books, try nonfiction and chapter books if they are ready. There are so many early reader nonfiction books available! When you read aloud to your preschooler, you help him or her develop the skills necessary to become a successful reader and help them transition more easily into school. The more often you read, the better prepared your child is to learn to read.
Tips for reading with your preschooler:
- Introduce new topics and situations to your child through books! Especially with school coming up, it’s a great idea to start reading books that talk about sharing, making friends, having disagreements, communicating feelings, and solving problems. These topics are all part of social emotional learning - people use these skills throughout their entire lives, so starting early is a great way to build a strong foundation!
- Ask open-ended questions. Instead of asking “yes” or “no” questions, try to engage your child in rich conversation to get them to use their language skills and thinking caps! You could ask questions like, ”I wonder how this character feels about that? Why do you think they feel that way? What do you see in this picture? What is that character doing?”
- Help your children develop their own reading tastes and let them pick out their own books. The library has tons of books available to choose from, and you can always ask a librarian to help look for books on a specific topic. This is a good way to tune into your child’s unique interests.
- Repetition is important for kids. Children often have favorite stories, and it’s wonderful to repeat books and have children learn the books by heart. You can always ask them to tell the story back to you, or ask them to tell the story in different ways once they are very familiar with it.
- Start pointing out individual letters. You can help your child start to recognize print by pointing out specific letters and their sounds. When starting a new book, you can ask things like, “Do you see an ‘A’ letter on this cover or page? Can you point to it?” Preschoolers like the letters in their name the best, so that’s a good place to start. Some preschoolers may be ready to point out repeated words as well. This helps connect early reading skills with a child’s favorite book.
Early Literacy Tips for 4-Year-Olds!
If you are interested in signing up for early literacy tips to use with your 4-year old, please consider signing up for the Ready 2 Read Texting Program! This program was created in October 2015 in order to provide parents and caregivers of four-year-olds FREE early literacy tips through texts on their phone. Those who sign up will receive three text messages per week for 8 months that provide easy, fun, and useful ideas for helping children develop and practice their early literacy skills. As a note, while this program was designed with 4-years-olds in mind, it can be altered easily to fit younger and older children!
Signing up for the program is FREE and EASY. Text the word "SIGNUP" to 406-204-3583.
If you’d like to preview the messages that you will receive, you can view them here:
Ready 2 Read Texting Program Messages
