Helping Your Child Get Ready to Read @ the Library

The library offers a variety of programs for many ages that promote the six essential early literacy skills identified by Every Child Ready to Read*. During August we emphasized Narrative Skills, Vocabulary and Phonological Skills:

Every Child Ready to Read: Phonological Awareness & Vocabulary

Sharing nursery rhymes and songs with your child helps them develop Phonological Awareness, another essential pre-reading skill identified in the Every Child Ready to Read research.

Enjoy some of the songs and rhymes from library storytime at home and sing others. Make some up! The melody and your skill don’t matter. Songs tend to give each syllable in a word its own note. That helps your child hear the smaller parts of the words and gets them ready to recognize those parts when learning to read. Also, hearing the rhyme helps your child get used to rhyming. Your child needs to know how to rhyme by the time he or she is four. Hearing and recognizing rhyme are the first steps in learning how to rhyme. Try these. If you're not sure what tune to use, try the tune to "100 Bottles of Beer on the Wall." It's actually an old folk melody and it works with most nursery rhymes. Or make up your own melody! But sing! And share rhymes with your child. You are helping them be ready to learn to read!

Little Bo Peep

Little Bo Peep has lost her sheep and doesn’t know where to find them.

Leave them alone and they’ll come home,

Wagging their tales behind them.

Two Little Blackbirds

Two little blackbirds

Sitting on a hill

One named Jack and one named Jill

Fly away Jack. Fly away Jill

Come back Jack. Come back Jill.

Six Little Ducks

Six little ducks
That I once knew
Fat ones, skinny ones,
Fair ones, too
But the one little duck
With the feather on his back
He led the others
With a quack, quack, quack

Quack, quack, quack,
Quack, quack, quack
He led the others
With a quack, quack, quack

Down to the river
They would go
Wibble, wobble, wibble, wobble,
To and fro
But the one little duck
With the feather on his back
He led the others
With a quack, quack, quack

Quack, quack, quack,
Quack, quack, quack
He led the others
With a quack, quack, quack

Nursery rhymes expose children to a variety of words that are not used in everyday conversation. They expand a child’s vocabulary. Children also hear rhyming words, which helps develop phonological awareness. Research shows that children who know rhymes find it easier to learn to read.

Every Child Ready to Read: Narrative Skills

Narrative Skills: Being able to describe things and events and tell stories.

· Retell some of the stories your child hears at library storytimes. After you have read a story a few times, have fun encouraging your child to retell it.

· Check out a book to read at home and then talk about what happens first, next and last in the story.

· Talk with your child using open-ended questions, not questions that can be answered by pointing or by yes or no. Give your child time to answer. Count to five before answering for her, if necessary; then ask the question again in another way.

Click here to check out the library recommended list of books to help you teach your child the 6 essential early literacy skills identified by Every Child Ready to Read. Ask your librarian for help to find these titles and more to help you get your child ready to learn to read. You are your child's first teacher and we are here to help!

*Based on information developed for “Every Child Ready to Read” a joint project of the Public Library Association and the Association for Library Service to Children. http://www.ala.org/ala/mgrps/divs/alsc/ecrr/index.cfm