Children start to understand reading and writing from the moment they are born. Every day, they are interacting with words and images that will help shape their future learning. Emergent literacy is a term that is used to explain a child’s knowledge of reading and writing skills before they learn how to read and write words. But how can you encourage emergent literacy at home?
- Read aloud
- Reading aloud to your child will encourage literacy skills while giving the two of you some bonding time as well. Bed time is a great time for a story so let your little one choose the story. Be sure to provide books that relate to your child’s own experiences, and read the story at a pace that will allow them to follow along.
- Get detailed in your descriptions
- Help your child expand their vocabulary by using unique and descriptive words in your every day language. When talking to your child, narrate what they are doing so that you are able to relate words to their experiences, as well as describing how everything looks and feels. Providing them with a sensory connection to every day words will have an impact on their vocabulary.
- Recalling Stories
- After the 100th time reading a story, your child definitely has parts memorized. Ask them to read the story to you! Recalling and retelling stories is another way to encourage those emergent reading skills. Children will use the pictures in books they are familiar with to explain these stories.
At Crème de la Crème, our fully-enriched curriculum focuses on all areas of development such as cognitive, social-emotional, physical, and language development. We provide our young students an opportunity to continue their emergent learning skills in all of their classrooms. We begin to teach those basic literacy skills in our language arts programs. Our teachers and classrooms provide our students with an opportunity to grow as young readers!