Kids stuff
Setting up your child
for success in life
Smith, the assistant executive director
of the Muttart Foundation, which just
published a discussion paper on early
childhood education.
“Children in families where someone
will just sit and spend time with them
are exposed to language, and they have a
much greater facility in terms of hearing
sounds and putting sounds together to
make words, and then putting words
together to make sentences,” he says.
Books and reading also foster
conversation, ignite the imagination,
pave the way for more formal learning
and build “pre-literacy.”
Pre-literacy is crucial for success in
school. “When kids don’t have that
foundation for literacy they’re starting
way behind the eight ball when they start
the formal process of acquiring reading,”
Bateman says.
Reading to your children from infancy
on will not only get them comfortable
with words and symbols and help them
understand they have meaning, Smith
says, but it will also help develop the
Feed baby; check. Burp baby;
check. Change her diaper. Read one
of her books to her. Experts say it’s
never too early to start reading to your
infant. In fact, books and reading are an
investment that will pay off when your
child gets to school.
“Learning to read doesn’t start in
grade one, it starts at birth,” says Dariel
Bateman of Calgary Reads, a literacy
group that helps struggling readers in
grades one and two. “Up until six or
eight months, you could be reading a
newspaper, or a magazine or Virginia
Woolf or whatever you want,” says
Bateman. “Reading, talking, chanting,
singing, cooing; it’s all how kids begin to
develop the notion of sound, and that the
sound means something.”
When babies get a little older, around
nine months, you can trade in the
newspaper for a soft baby book and settle
in, snuggle up and spend time reading
to your child. “It’s really foundational
in terms of children accessing and
learning language,” says Christopher
emotional and cognitive skills they need
to focus in the classroom.
No one expects your kids to be reading
when they start kindergarten (or earlier),
but being versed in pre-literacy means
they will likely know their letters and
might be able to write their name on
their first day of school, skills that will
help guarantee their success in the school
days to follow.
— Jennifer Allford
For a list of suggested reading,
visit applemag.ca.