Your child and reading  How can you help? BEFORE YOUR CHILD GOES TO SCHOOL You can do a great deal with your child before he starts school.   Here are a few ideas.   They take no special skill but they do take a little time. The end result, however, will be well worth every bit of that time. TALK TO YOUR CHILD Even at an early age – during the first five years – you should talk to your  child, not baby talk, but real words.   The more words children know, the easier it is for them to learn to read.   So talk – even to your baby. For example, with very young children, it is easy, just talk about what you are doing. You can say things like, ‘Now we are preparing dinner’ or ‘Daddy is tying your shoe laces’. If you just talk about things you do during the day, little ones soon learn a number of words, and that is an essential start to reading. LISTEN TO YOUR CHILD Get your child to talk about the things he sees and does. Good talkers usually make good readers. Children will talk if they know that someone will pay attention and listen. READ TO YOUR CHILD From a very early age this is the most important thing you can do. When you read to your children they must be able to see the page and follow as you read, even if the symbols have no meaning at all for them yet. The left to right progression is a learnt process.   Discuss the story and the pictures. TAKE YOUR CHILD PLACES Visits to places like a nursery, a nature centre, a museum, an art gallery, an airport, a park, a zoo and children’s theatre, all help to give children new interests. Read up about your trip before and after the visit. LET YOUR CHILD SEE YOU READING Keep books, magazines and newspapers in your home. Don’t confine your reading to hours when the youngsters are in bed. Time set aside for ‘family reading’ can prove to be most beneficial. Your example means a lot to your child. WATCH TELEVISION WITH YOUR CHILD Children learn much from television – both good and bad. Read the television guide together and then choose programmes with care, and watch them with your child whenever possible. Get your child to talk to you about what you both have seen. PLAY WORD GAMES WITH YOUR CHILD Here are a few word games you can play with your child that provide a good start on learning to read. The ‘Starts Like’ Game Parents can play this game with the little things at home or driving in the car. Please note – that the emphasis is on the sound of the first letter – apple, apron and aeroplane do not start with the same sound. You say, ‘Tell me a word that starts like milk’. At first, you give such hints as: It shines at night (moon), you strike it to get a flame. Later you can stop giving hints.   The child will soon get the idea that many words start with the same sound and will enjoy thinking up words that ‘start like’ the word you provide. The ‘Cut-and Paste’ Game On rainy days, the child can take old magazines and cut out pictures of things that start with the same sound – car, coat, cake for example. To get your child started:  Paste a picture of a car on a page. Then say to the child ‘Find pictures of things that start like car. cut them out and paste them here’. City and circus do not start with the ‘c’ sound). If your child can’t handle cutting and pasting yet, you can help them with that. You can also print the starting letter on the page. This will help your child understand that this letter stands for that sound. Please do not use capital (uppercase) letters. The ‘Missing Word’ Game Here’s another game you can play with your child. You say ‘I’ll say something and leave out the last word. You tell me what word you think I left out’. A typical sentence might be, ‘I guess I’d better open the …..’. If your child responds with any word that makes good sense door,  window, gate, package, envelope or bottle, give praise and ask for suggestions of other words that would make sense there. Try to use sentences in which many different words would make sense at the end. Activities of this kind can help, but please keep them as games. Enjoy them – and your child. Learning to read is such a big job that you should not make it harder for your child by pushing too far or too fast. DISCOVER A NEW, EASY WAY OF FINDING TOP QUALITY BOOKS FOR YOUR CHILD It has been proven time and time again that it is never too early to start reading to your child. Babies have an amazing curiosity, and begin to learn almost as soon as they are born. Reading to your baby from a young age teaches her that reading is an enjoyable activity, a special time that the two of you can share. By about 12 months, your child will begin to realise that stories have a beginning, middle and end and will start to anticipate what comes next. Textured books help sustain your child's interest for longer, and give her/him a role to play in the activity while you read the words. When choosing books for your child, it is important to look for stories with big, clear illustrations of familiar things that she can easily relate to. Stories with rhymes and phrases that are constantly repeated help to keep her attention. It is also helpful to ask questions about the text and pictures (and answer these questions yourself), even though she can’t answer back yet, as this helps her to start formulating questions in her own mind. Photographic books are ideal for babies as they respond well to real pictures of people, objects and animals. Textured books help a young child explore their sense of touch, as well as providing a good way to hold their attention for longer. Noisy books, with squeaks and rattles, are always a favourite as the child becomes actively involved in the story-telling by touching and hearing. Pop-up and lift-the-flap books are also a hit as the child has to perform an activity in order for the words in the books to make sense, thus giving her a sense of her own worth. Great Dog Books is a unique company that sells top of the range British books for your children from babyhood to school-going age. It is the brainchild of a British children’s book editor who on arrival in South Africa was appalled at how difficult it was to find good quality baby and toddler books in our bookshops with small children in tow, Great Dog Books brings the books to you. They organize parties at mothers’ homes, where a trained agent will show you the range and give advice on books suitable for your children’s ages and interests. They also undercut most shop’s prices and have a far larger range than you would find elsewhere. Great Dog Books sells from the Campbell Books range, which is the UK’s best-selling range of  books for the very young, and from Walker Books, Britain’s leading publisher of full-colour picture books. The books are interactive and encourage the child to take part in the story: in most of the books there are flaps to lift, patches to touch, puzzles to make or other activities to take part in. Email this article to a friend Back to Articles on Child Care...