The following post is by contributor Robin Zipporah of Not-Ever-Still.
My sweet kindergarten girl is a beginning reader. She can read almost anything, slowly, as long as she doesn’t get frustrated or lose patience. Her handwriting is the same – it’s quite good, really, but sometimes when she’s tired or hurrying she still transposes those Bs and Ds or draws a backwards 9.
She’s like many smart kids, I think – she’s quite capable but she has perfectionist tendencies and because she is bright, she’s not accustomed enough to confronting challenge. Put those two qualities together, and sometimes she gives up entirely too easily. She wants help or declares her disinterest in favor of coloring or another activity.
So I’ve been intentionally building in little bits of reading and writing practice into our regular daily activities…without, you know, really drawing attention to the fact that we’re practicing anything. They aren’t drastic and they don’t take too much time; mostly they’re little ways of changing our routines. And as a bonus, they’re so much more than reading and writing activities – they’re fostering self-sufficiency and confidence in my girl.
Here are a few of my favorites:
You and your children may already be familiar with Rosemary Wells, the author and illustrator of the Max and Ruby series. Last spring, my oldest daughter went through a prolonged phase of choosing only Max and Ruby books at each library trip. One day, we were browsing through the books by Ms. Wells and happened upon Carry Me. It’s not a Max and Ruby book, but it does include a bunny family, so my skeptical daughter agreed to add it to our stack. Both of us were absolutely enchanted by this short, sweet book of simple poetry and lush illustrations.
Many parents know that reading to a child for just fifteen minutes a day builds strong pre-literacy skills. Study after study provides resounding evidence that reading aloud to even the youngest children (including and especially pre-verbal babies) lays the groundwork for a strong sense of language mastery.
