Families Read and Write at Home

The following is provided by the Texas A&M Institute for Early Childhood Development & Education

Many families of young children, including those who participated in research at the Becky Gates and Charlotte Sharp Children’s Centers, read with their children frequently. Reading aloud to your child sparks their interest in literacy and the exploration of books. Reading together not only builds motivation; it fosters your child to be a lifelong reader. Reading and writing at home extends learning and its importance to daily life and education. Families who read together are truly partners with the children’s centers in promoting important early reading and writing skills for your young children, laying the foundation for their future academic success.

We know families support children’s learning in so many ways. For some new ideas, try these fun additions to what you are already doing at home!

• Read and reread books with children. Children remember significantly more new words in books during a 3rd or 4th reading than during the first.
• As you read, ask your child their ideas about what might happen next or how they think the characters could solve the problem in the story. This promotes language and critical thinking skills!
• To expand children’s language skills, ask your child questions about the characters, such as how they might be feeling, and encourage children to share their ideas or feelings about what is happening in the story.
• Select 1-3 special words from the text your child does not know yet. Define the word for them, encourage the child to say the new word, clap how many syllables the word has and identify the first letter and sound in the word. Engaging in word learning during read-aloud builds literacy skills.
• Preschoolers explore spelling by connecting sounds to letters. You can do this by noticing rhyming words and identifying the letters that make the same ending sounds or identifying words that sound the same at the beginning and identifying which letter makes that sound.

These research-based practices are brought to you by researchers in College Station as they enhance early childhood development and education!

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