Introduction
These Family Activities include easy-to-follow plans to help you support your child's foundational reading skills at home. Materials needed for each Family Activity, such as letter cards, are included. They begin with simpler activities and progress to more difficult ones. You may want to start with the first activity and move to the next when you notice that your child has a firm understanding of the content from that activity. We encourage you to select appropriate activities for your child, and feel free to set aside an activity that seems too difficult. The goal is to engage your child in activities that promote learning in a positive environment, not to induce frustration. The activities should be completed with the child, frequently, with patience, and positive feedback. Using the activities at home will be a fun way to spend family time together!
The Family Literacy Videos show families engaging their child in the Family Activities. The key points about the videos can help you know what to focus on for a specific activity.
The Family Activities were excerpted from a Kindergarten Teacher's Guide to Support Family Involvement in Foundational Reading Skills, which is free online:
A Kindergarten Teacher’s Guide to Supporting Involvement in Foundational Reading Skills
You can also access these videos free online: REL Southeast's K Family Involvement Guide - YouTube
Developing Language
Expose your child to the language that is common in books and in schools.
Having a conversation about a book will develop your child's vocabulary and knowledge about the topic of that book. Whether you are reading a fairy tale, a picture book, an informational book, or any other text, you can engage in a discussion as you enjoy reading together.
The best books to use have detailed pictures and are about topics that are interesting to your child. You can use books from your home or borrow a book from your child's classroom library, school library, or the public library. Also, keep in mind that you can access books on laptop computers, tablets, digital reading devices, and smartphones. Websites such as Project Gutenberg provide free access to books and mobile formats especially for smartphones. Don't forget to look through your phone's app store for free apps containing books for children.
To engage your child in conversation, you can use a tool called PEER: Prompt, Evaluate, Expand, and Repeat. See the Talking While You Read tri-fold and Bookmark for an example of how to use PEER.
Featured Videos
Talking While You Read (Bear Says Thanks)
Key Points About the Video
- Mom uses some of the important words, like bare, from the book to ask questions and talk about the book.
- Mom has the Talking While You Read Bookmark in her hand to remind her about the kinds of questions to ask.
- Mom encourages her son to answer questions in complete sentences by modeling how to do so.
- Mom rereads the relevant part of the story if her son doesn't know the answer to a question.
Talking While You Read (Llama Llama and the Bully Goat)
Key Points About the Video
- Mom asks several "wh" questions (who, what, where, when, why, and how) to provide opportunities to engage in a conversation about the book.
- Mom relates the activities in the book to her daughter's life.
- Mom and daughter discuss words and their meanings ("equation", "bully").
Oral language is the way we communicate with others through speaking and listening. Vocabulary knowledge is a crucial part of oral language and includes understanding the meaning of words, how to use them, and how to pronounce them. Speaking and listening to your child every day about books and his or her experiences will help your child expand his or her vocabulary. Children with strong oral language skills and larger vocabularies typically become better readers. The best ways to give your child a strong foundation for learning to read are to read to, talk to, and listen to your child every day. Talk about people you know, places you go, and experiences you have together. Writing with your child also helps with oral language development.
Ask questions that require more than a yes or no answer. For example, instead of asking, "Did you have a good day?" ask, "What was your favorite part of school today?" Continue to ask questions about your child's response. If the answer was "Recess," ask, "Who did you play with?" "What did you do?" "How do you play that game?"
When you speak with your child, model speaking in complete sentences and provide details. For example, if your child points to a butterfly and says, "Butterfly!" say, "Yes, that is a monarch butterfly! Aren't her colorful wings beautiful?"
Linking Sounds to Letters
Help your child link sounds in speech to letters in print.
Although speaking and listening may not seem related to learning to read, being aware of sounds in words is very important to reading. This awareness allows children to break apart words orally and use sounds to learn to read and write words. Children first need to become aware of sounds in words without relating those sounds to print. They demonstrate their knowledge using their speaking and listening skills.
You can help your child develop an awareness of sounds in spoken words. Singing silly songs and making up silly words or poems are ways to enhance your child's awareness of sounds. These skills are fun to practice because most children love to play with sounds in words. You can make up silly sentences where most of the words begin with the same sound: Leo the lion liked to lick a lot of lollipops!
There are many types of different sounds in words. For example, one skill is being able to separate words into syllables, or parts, like knowing that the word folder has two syllables, or parts: fold-er. And the word computer has three syllables or parts: com-pu-ter. Being able to separate words into syllables will help children break a word into parts in order to read or spell the word.
There are many different types of sounds in words. For example, rhyming words represent a type of sound relationship between words. Children need to have the ability to recognize when words rhyme. Words rhyme when they have the same ending sound. For example, blue and shoe rhyme and moon and spoon rhyme. When children recognize words that rhyme and can say a word that rhymes with a word they are given, they can use known words to read new words—for example, they can use the known word fall to help read the unfamiliar word wall.
Although speaking and listening may not seem related to learning to read, being aware of sounds in words is very important to reading. This awareness allows children to break apart words orally and use sounds to learn to read and write words. Children first need to become aware of sounds in words without relating those sounds to print. They demonstrate their knowledge using their speaking and listening skills.
Being able to recognize the individual sounds in words is the most important skill for learning to read that is related to sound awareness. When you see a letter between forward slashes, /s/, say the sound of that letter. If you see a letter without forward slashes, s, say the name of that letter. An example of phonemic awareness is knowing that the word cat has three separate sounds (/k/ /a/ /t/) and that the first sound in cat is /k/ and the last sound in cat is /t/. Recognizing individual sounds in a word that is spoken will eventually help children "sound out" a word when they begin to learn to read simple words. For example, a child who can hear three separate sounds in sat, /s/ /a/ /t/, can then link a letter to each sound, s a t, and read the word sat.
It is also helpful if children can identify beginning and ending sounds in a word. For example, in the word cat, the beginning sound is /k/ and the ending sound is /at/. In school, we may talk about word families. Word families are groups of words that have the same endings. For example, bat, cat, and sat are all in the same word family.
It is important for children to know letter names and letter sounds.
- Letter-name knowledge is recognizing and naming letters. An example of recognizing letters is when you show a child the letters N, A, and S and ask which letter is S, the child points to the S. An example of naming letters is when a child looks at the letter M and orally names that letter.
- Letter-sound knowledge is demonstrated when a child can look at a letter in print and tell you the sound it represents. For example, if you point to the letter F and ask, "What sounds does this letter make?" the child will say, "/f/."
There are many ways to support your child's knowledge of letter names and letter sounds. For example, you can look for a specific letter in a book or in a newspaper and then ask your child the sound that letter represents. You can point out letters on signs while in the car. You can sing the alphabet song while getting ready for school or doing chores at home. You can have your child identify specific letters in a magazine and then practice writing the letters.
An important step in learning to read is being able to connect how words are separated into individual sounds with knowledge of how letters relate to sounds. For example, being able to hear the individual sounds in the word sat, /s/ /a/ /t/, and knowing that s represents /s/, a represents /a/, and t represents /t/. Word-building activities can be used to support your child's learning to read and spell.
