We're Rockin' and Readin' Now: Reading activities as your child grows

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Lets Read: Open the Door

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No need to debate the benefits of reading to your child...the evidence is in and it is clearly one of the best things you can do for your child!

There are a few tricks that make reading with your child more enjoyable and productive. Here are some reading activities you may want to try:

For young children, it's over and over again.
1. Pick a story or poem that repeats phrases. Assign your child a phrase to repeat each time you read a new part of the story.

2. Read a short portion of the story or poem, then stop and let your child repeat the phrase.

3. Encourage your child to act out the story. For example, with the story of the "Three Little Pigs:"

Wolf (parent): Little pig, little pig, Let me come in.

Little Pig (child): Not by the hair on my chinny-chin-chin?

Wolf (parent): Then I'll huff and I'll puff and I'll blow your house in!

Make sense of sounds for beginning readers.
1. Look for poems or tongue twisters that repeat sounds and letters.

2. Point out these sounds and letters, and explain that they often make the same sound whenever you see them with other letters on the page. For example:

• There once was a fat cat named Matt.
  
• And a black cat who had a big bat.
  
• The rat put a tack
  
• When the cat turned his back
  
• On the mat where the black cat sat.
  
• A big blue barrel of big blue blueberries.
  
• Does this shop sell socks with spots?
  

For more advanced readers, it's a matter of reading together.
1. Ask your child to read to you.

2. Take turns. You read a paragraph and your child can read the next one, or take turns reading full pages one after the other. Keep in mind that your child may be concentrating on how to read, and your reading helps to keep the story alive.

3. If your child has trouble reading words, you can help in several ways:

• have your child use what is known about letters and the sounds they make to "sound out" the word;
  
• have your child skip over the word, read the rest of the sentence, and ask what word would make sense in the story; or
  
• supply the word and keep reading: enjoyment is the main goal!
  

Much of this information is taken from "Helping Your Child Learn to Read" and from the Literacy Council of Alaska. For more information,you can write to the National Library of Education, 555 New Jersey Ave., NW, Washington, DC 20208, or call 1-800-424-1616.