10 Great Books to Read Aloud with Young Children

 

Stern Center’s Building Blocks for Literacy® program teaches early care and education providers as well as parents how to foster early literacy skills in children. Our Building Blocks coordinator, Brenda Buzzell, has compiled a list of books that are not only fun to read with young children, but also helpful in promoting the three focus areas of the Building Blocks program: Shared Book Reading, Phonological Awareness and the Speech-to-Print connection.

Shared Book Reading: Reading with your child rather than to your child is the key here. Making reading interactive by asking questions about the story and talking about the pictures is not only a great way to connect with your child, but key to helping your children develop language, build comprehension and learn more about print. Here are 10 books to help promote Shared Book Reading:

• Amazing Grace by Mary Hoffman
• Blueberries for Sal by Robert McCloskey
• Caps for Sale by Esphyr Slobodkina
• HUG by Jez Alborough
• Knuffle Bunny by Mo Willems
• Little Red Hen Makes a Pizza by Philemon Sturges
• The Mitten by Jan Brett
• Stone Soup by Ann McGovern
• Tops and Bottoms by Janet Stevens
• Whose Mouse Are You? by Robert Krauss 

Write On! Three Ways to Teach Your Preschooler That What They Say Can be Written Down

People are motivated to read and write because we know that print contains a message. We also know that anything we say can be put into print. In our third and final post of this series spotlighting different early literacy games to play at home, we will focus on building awareness about speech to print or what we say can be written down. 

Speech to print is the third building block in the journey towards becoming a reader alongside shared book reading and phonological awareness, which we discussed in the previous two blogs of this series, Sharing Stories, Building Brains, and 5 Games for Busy Parents to Help Their Young Children Learn to Read.
 
Here are a few games that will help your little ones master this early literacy skill:  

If You Can Say It, You Can Write It!
Have your child dictate a thank you note, an email or a story to you. Write down exactly what is said, not making any corrections for grammar or pronunciation. Read it back to your child, pointing to each word as you go.

Where in the World is Brenda "Building Blocks" Buzzell?

Brenda just returned from Orlando, FL. Numbers, year to date 2014, of children positively impacted by Building Blocks for Literacy® program: over 1,000!

Where's Brenda follows our Building Blocks Coordinator, Brenda Buzzell, around the United States as she works with preschool teachers, and early care providers and coordinators to teach them best practices for teaching early literacy skills to children ages three to five. www.buildingblocksforliteracy.org.


 

Help Your Child Get Ready to Read Through Games Part III

How-To: Help Your Child Get Ready to Read Through Games, is a four-part series of “how-to” videos for parents, and early child care providers and educators that shows you different games you can play with your children to help them get ready to read in kindergarten. Each of the videos models a different technique that will increase your children's early literacy skills through fun and games. For more information on how to help prepare your child for reading, or to find more fun ideas and games, check out the Stern Center's Building Blocks for Literacy online program for parents and educators. 

This week's How-To focuses on the sounds of letters. This is important because the ability to think about the individual sounds in a word is one of the strongest indicators of future reading success. Below are two games you can play with your child that will keep them entertained while at the same time helping them practice their letter sounds.

How To: Help Your Child Get Ready to Read Through Games (Part II)

How-To: Help Your Child Get Ready to Read- Games, is a four-part series of how-to videos for parents, and early child care providers and educators that shows you different games you can play with your children to help get them ready to read in kindergarten. Each of the videos models a different technique that will increase your children's early literacy skills through fun and games. For more information about helping your child prepare for reading or to find more videos, check out the Stern Center's Building Blocks for Literacy online program for parents and educators.

This week's How-To is a strategy to teach kids about syllable awareness and how words are made up of different parts and sounds. Children progress from simpler to more complex tasks when working with syllables:

Level 1: Blending and putting syllables together. For example, a parent says, "Guess my secret word." And the child responds,"Bum ble bee."

Level 2: Segmenting and taking syllables apart within words. For example, "My name is E liz a beth."

Level 3: Taking syllables away is an even more complex skill. The video below demonstrates a game you can play with your child.

President's Message: Early Opportunity

by Dr. Blanche Podhajski

Early education is back in the forefront.  President Obama is not alone in valuing the importance of quality experiences during the earliest years.  Educators have long expressed concern about disparities on the preschool playing field.

Children of poverty have been reported to have the fewest of these quality experiences and by four years of age lag behind their peers in basic language skills that predict becoming literate.