Tmerno
Find out how your participation in children’s daily lives can be essential for them to become literate more quickly.
Although the formal responsibility for teaching children to read and write falls on schools , they are not and cannot be the only ones responsible for this function. Understanding how parents can help their children to read and write can make a huge difference for them.
Simply spending time with their children and encouraging them to read, for example, are ways to make their understanding of vocabulary simpler and more efficient. Because of this, it is crucial that parents understand literacy exercises and how to implement them for their kids.
There are no hard and fast rules in this regard; the choices are virtually limitless. While some kids can grow more independently, others might need more assistance in specific areas. The truth is that you can contribute in a variety of ways to make this process more fulfilling for everyone.
01. Read to your children
It is interesting to note that many people associate the term “reader” only with those who practice the act of reading. However, a child who listens to their parents reading a book is also, in a way, practicing reading, in the sense that it develops their imagination and broadens their world view.
Books and comics are great tools to get your child interested in language. Show your child the pictures so they can make connections and read the same book more than once. The outcomes will be better the earlier you get started.
You don’t necessarily have to wait until your child starts school to learn the alphabet. Perception development involves understanding that reading is done from left to right, that letters are different from pictures, and so on.
02. Encourage reading in everyday life
You’ve probably seen this situation before: when a child learns to read, he or she goes out into the streets reading every sign possible. Some parents criticize their children because they think this behavior is repetitive, but the opposite should happen: this is a time of discovery.
As adults, we no longer realize the amount of visual information we receive every day. For children, it is a whole new world when all those letters start to make sense. Encourage them to read and make connections between the signs.
03. Encourage children to write
We have lost the habit of writing letters these days and the computer has become the dominant form of writing. However, reviving this tradition can be an interesting way to encourage children to put their ideas on paper.
Encourage your youngster to send a letter to their grandparents expressing their gratitude for everything that they have in common. It doesn’t matter if the writing seems illegible at first; the important thing is to motivate them to figure out the most comfortable pen grip and letter formation.
The content is something that will be developed later. Let the child write whatever they want and then talk to the child about what they wrote. Often they do not yet know how to put their intentions into words.
04. Create a literacy environment
Visual elements that refer to letters should be present in the child’s environment during the literacy phase. This includes toys with words and numbers, photo albums with captions, scrapbooks, cardboard and colored markers so that they can draw and copy what they see.
It used to be thought that labelling objects would help kids learn their meanings by heart, but as time goes on, we can see that this is not always the case. The most crucial element is that kids learn words in context—that is, in both written and spoken forms.
Again, parental encouragement is essential. Talk to them about the objects in the house, what they are for and how they are made. In addition, bring in elements of the child’s experiences, such as trips or games, so that they can have more support to make connections between the information.
