Montessori Magnet School
Library Media Center
READING WITH CHILDREN
Educators consistently agree that reading is the key to a successful educational experience. Many organizations and agencies have made websites and lists of ways to help your child learn to read and enjoy reading. Here are a few helpful hints and some websites for more information.
Helping Your Child With Reading
· Read Together
Finding a time to share books together conveys an important message to your children. Bedtime is a natural quiet and relaxing time to read, but make room for other times as well. Take trips to the public library; check with bookstores, museums, and discovery centers for special children's activities, read the newspapers for articles about children's books. All of these things will help you fit reading into your regular routine.
· Talk Together
Talk is important. The more children can express their own thoughts, the more they will be able to understand the expressions of others. Children need to have experiences tied to what they know. Turn experience into language by explain new experiences and new objects. Use similes and metaphors to relate them to what the children already know. Define words they don't know. Use books to learn about new places and new activities. The world is so small now that we can learn of happenings in Africa or Australia before we hear of things that happen on our own blocks.
· Pay Attention to Print
Print is everywhere in the environment these days. A trip across town can be a learning adventure if you ask the children to find words around them. Start with two or three words such as eat and food, or gas and pay, or store and shoes. Find as many examples as you can. Ask children to cut pictures from catalogs and then paste them onto 3x5 cards. Help them label the cards with appropriate words. Make match, memory or sorting games out of the cards. Point out signs with unusual words on them. Notice print wherever you are.
· Connect Speaking with Reading and Writing
Here are a few ways to develop the connections between talking, reading and writing. Encourage your children to talk about their day. Help your child learn to write his or her name. Encourage children to ask questions and use books or other sources to find out more about any questions they have. Make daily plans together. As children get older, write down the plans. Write notes to each other and to extended family members. Ask your child to be the record keeper for trips or excursions by drawing pictures that you can later discuss and cation. Everyone can write and add something different to a picture from an family experience.
· Find out more
More ideas plus activities that will help you put these suggestions into practice are available on the World Wide Web.
A Parent's Guide to Helping Your Child Learn to Read This guide written through a joint project of the National Education Association and National Parent Teacher Association steps you through the grade levels with activities and ideas for children at different stages of development. http://www.nea.org/parents/learntoread.html
Helping Your Child Learn To Read: Activities for Children from Infancy through Age 10 is sponsored by the International Reading Association. Written by well-known experts in the field of reading, this is a great sight for ideas for young children. http://www.kidsource.com/kidsource/content/learread.html
The Helping Your Child publication series from the United States Department of Education aims to provide parents with the tools and information necessary to help their children succeed in school and life. These booklets feature practical lessons and activities to help their school aged and preschool children master reading, understand the value of homework and develop the skills and values necessary to achieve and grow. http://www.ed.gov/parents/academic/help/hyc.html
This article is on the Internet for your convenience and has links to the websites above. You can reach it through the Montessori School website. Type www.rps205.com and click on scroll down to the Blue Box labeled RPS Family of Websites. Locate School Websites on the list, then find Montessori School under Elementary Schools. To reach this article, select Staff WebPages from the bar at the left, then Library Media Center. Select Quesper from the bar at the left then scroll to the bottom of the screen to Helping Your Child with Reading. You can also reach the above sites by using www.quesper.org then click on Montessori Magnet School Library Media Center, scroll down to the bottom of the screen and click on Helping Your Child with Reading.
Carol J. Fox
Library Media Specialist
Montessori Magnet School
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