Fostering Childhood Literacy: A Quest Like No Other

So you want to Raise a Reader...

 

Growing up I was always the kind of kid who was reading. I read when other kids were out playing in the streets. I read when I was supposed to be doing my homework. I read in secret under the covers until 3 AM, jumping at every noise convinced my mom was going to bust me. Reading for me has always been the stuff of life.

When I found out we were pregnant with E I bought books, upon books, upon books. What to Expect When You're Expecting, The Womanly Art of Breastfeeding, and Belly Laughs made up my pregnancy. I felt ready to charge into motherhood head first with my considerable book knowledge. Of course, as all babies do, E arrived and I received an education of arguably greater depth and breadth from the school of hard knocks. Still, books had helped prepared me for her in a small way. Then the first two months of E's life she barely slept, I gave up on sleeping too and caught up on nine books on my e-reader. Even in delirium, books were at the epicenter of my world.

At about five months old the fog finally started to clear from our lives as E was starting to sleep in her own crib and was gaining minor independence. One day I received a questionnaire from Alberta Health Services about Emma's development and an enclosed flyer about reading from birth to promote lifelong literacy. To this point I'd just been trying to survive a colicky baby and a move to a town six hours from the city we had lived in, so teaching her fundamental skills for lifelong literacy hadn't even occurred to me. Hell half the time a shower hadn't even occurred to me (and I NEEDED one). But I knew I wanted my baby girl to be privileged enough to love literature as much as her Mama. I knew from my psychology classes in university that laying the foundation for life skills such as reading needed to be laid in infancy. What the hell had I been doing for five months?! All my anxious mind could do was obsess over the thought that a better mother would be doing better. All the fight in me could think was 'Where do I start?'.

E and Daddy at the library

Talk 'til you Drop

My most important discovery about literacy and overall early language development is that you cannot ever talk enough to your kids. Thank God, its also the easiest thing you can do every single day (you're such a killer mom you're probably doing it already)! While reading wasn't a focus for us until that fated AHS flyer came to my door, I narrated everything to E from the time she was born and it was one of the greatest pieces of parenting advice my mom has given me (so far anyway ;) ) to talk 'til I dropped. When we go out we talk about what she sees, where we're going, things we have to do. When I cook we count measurements or list ingredients. We sing silly songs to her sister and teach K games like "Pat-a-Cake".

Talking about seemingly banal things has, to my mind, made a huge difference in E's language development. She spoke her first word (that she clearly understood the meaning of anyway!) at 6 months in true to E fashion:

 

She hasn't stopped talking since. Now at 21 months she speaks in two to three words sentences (sometimes more!) and is never at a loss for words. Our doctor and the public health nurse have both declared her "brilliant" and "extremely verbally advanced", but I think her development has a lot to do with what she's been exposed to. Sure, E is a smart kid (doesn't everyone believe that about their kid though?) but even the smartest children can't flourish without the right stimulus and experience. Exposing your child to literature on whatever basis you can is improving their stead in life no matter how much more you wish you were doing for them. Now I'm not saying that reading to your child everyday and talking to them until you are blue in the face will insure they are like E and talking at 6 months (in fact most children won't and K at almost 6 months isn't even close), but in the long run you are raising a reader, a thinker, a doer. The work you're doing now will shape the way they see the world. Be proud of whatever it is you do!

Books for Bedtime

While bedtime reading seems like the most pedestrian of literacy building activities I think its also one of the most important. E has always been a ghastly sleeper (to put it mildly) but the introduction of the bedtime read made bedtime less of a fight because she enjoys going to bed to have "Mo book!". While the activity itself is self-explanatory I've always stressed (even to my not-so-book-crazy husband) that no matter what we will read her books before bed. Making reading a constant in her life has made her love books and reading so much. So often these days we check on her before we turn in and find some variation on this:

Family Literacy Bag Program

The first trip E and I took on our quest to "find" literacy was to our local library. In our town its a rather small institution so I wasn't holding out much hope of finding the resources we needed to get started- but we did! Our library had put together a family literacy program to encourage parents to read to their pre-school aged children. In each themed bag they enclosed about four books, coloring sheets, a flash card matching game and a craft.

On our first visit E and I took home a bag about spring. I was completely overwhelmed by the activities at first so we started off by just reading the books together (I let her turn pages to help develop her fine motor skills, so this was a lengthy process). Then the next day we read them again and integrated the flash cards by naming the pictures instead of matching them. Afterall, what good is learning an object relationship if you can't identify the objects right? The coloring sheets and craft laid in the bag untouched because I wasn't even going there with a five month old, I just wasn't that brave, but that first bag changed our little world. We had found our first shared point of interest.

Since that first bag we've since taken every bag at the library out more than once, made a plethora of crafts that litter our computer desk, made up our own crafts (like construction paper shoes! FYI not great for walking in) when the bag had none, we've even had a few of our own themed days around our literacy bags. Princess Day for example, was a big hit.

The beauty of this program is that it has all the materials you need to begin to enrich your child's world with the written word. If your library doesn't have such a program, you are OCD mama and I hear you roar! Setting up your own bag is easy. Grab a few books surrounding a similar subject (animals is an easy one to start with- what children's book doesn't have an animal of some sort in it?), print some coloring sheets off for older babes and toddlers, draw your own animals together, make paw-print cookies! You can do as little or as much as you want and still enhance your child's love of books. Or you can inquire with your library about potentially starting a program with them yourself. Live Ghandi's vision and be the change you wish to see in the world!

Discovering our Inner-Seussians

In the midst of our love affair with the Family Literacy Bags I happened to hear from a friend of mine (who happens to be a bit of a literary academic) that there had been some recent research that suggested reading Seuss to young children would help them to develop better language skills as they grew. That was all it took for me to launch into buying E some of my favorite childhood reads: One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish, The Cat in the Hat, The Lorax, Oh the Places You'll Go! and Oh The Thinks You Can Think!. At first she was too wiggly to get through a full read of One Fish but loved to look at the pictures. That was okay I figured, I wasn't going to push through and keep reading it if she wasn't interested. I didn't want to make her hate it. Still, every night we ended our bedtime stories with one Seuss or another to varying degrees of completeness, and every night we did a little better.

Now at 21 months E's favorite book is Oh the Thinks You Can Think!. In fact I have the whole book memorized to the point where I often wonder why Kitty O'Sullivan Krauss has a big balloon swimming pool over her house and how high her house insurance payments must be ;) . What's better still is the deluge of words that came from our Seuss-tastic evening reading routine. She loves to point to Sam and chatter about his "geen eggs and 'ams", or answer Oh The Places You'll Go!'s ultimate question, "And will you succeed?" with a sweet and sleepy "Yes."

Emma rocking her Cindy Lou Who hair style!

Teach My Toddler Kit

Our newest adventure into the world of reading and literacy is the Teach My Toddler Kit we received recently. While E, K and I are still new to the lessons contained in our big suitcase full of the alphabet, numbers, colors, shapes, continents and animals we are enjoying it. Each lesson contains a board book, a puzzle that relates to the concepts in the book and a matching card game to relate back to the concepts in the puzzle. You however do not need this kit (or any other supplemental program for that matter) to promote literacy in your household- its a fabulous addition to break up our reading routine and E loves the puzzles but you could easily gather up similar materials on your own. If you're looking for something pre-assembled however it is a great buy!

Recently, while watching an episode of Dragon's Den, a group of young presenters said a very apt thing that I feel really applies to teaching our children just about anything:

"When you change the things you look at, the things you look at change."

So stop looking at all the things you aren't doing "right"! So you aren't feeding your child vegan, gluten-free meals, that sweet kid doesn't own a stitch of organic cotton clothing and you let them play with your IPad so you can have five minutes of peace- it happens to all of us whether we admit it or not. But when we focus on the amazing things we can foster in our children, those things materialize and fluorish in the little people who are our masterpieces. You've got this Mom, whether you've got a brand new baby and are starting early (way to go!) or starting to tackle literacy with an older toddler or pre-schooler (awesome, they'll be so ahead once school starts!), in the words of E's favorite author, "...You're off to great places, you're off and away. Your mountain is waiting, so get on your way!"