Book Smart Can Help
Children are able to develop early literacy skills, such as being able to hear and play with sounds in words, recognize letters, and develop a strong vocabulary, as early as two, three, and four years old. These skills then lead to the ability to sound out and understand stories. Then, by the second or third grade, these skills become interconnected. This is why it is essential to promote these skills through interactive shared reading experiences before its too late.
In fact, there is a lot of evidence that shows that one can predict how a child will perform in reading tasks throughout their whole school career based on how well they are aware of these early skills in preschool and kindergarten. This is why it is so critical for parents to provide these experiences and opportunities to their toddlers and preschools before they enter kindergarten. In fact, this is exactly what the parents of academically successful children do.
By reading with your child, you will have the opportunity to model and develop your child’s persistence, curiosity, perspective-taking, and empathy skills - which are all components of your child’s character that affect academic and occupational success. This can be done with a variety of different reading sources such as books, magazines, songs, signs, and any other printed material you come across. By becoming your child’s personal tutor and role model, you can help your child develop the tools necessary for all academic disciplines. But most importantly, your child will have the skills necessary to be able to create a reader’s identity and develop a genuine appreciation for reading.