Toddlers

Toddlers explore their world with energy and excitement. Parents can peak this natural curiosity through excitement about books. Show children the joy of reading by reading yourself: Books, the newspaper or magazines. As a parent, you are your child’s best teacher because you know your child’s likes and dislikes and can pick books accordingly. This will encourage a love for books, which will later translate into a love of reading. As toddlers become more observant, they will quickly learn the dynamics of a book and reading.  Allow your toddler to hold the book and flip the pages, encouraging early literacy learning.

Love Books (Print Motivation): You may often hear, “Read with your child 10 or 20 minutes a day.” No one expects young children to be still and listen for that long at one sitting. Two or three minutes at a time is fine. Making the interaction positive is the most important thing.

Use Books (Print Awareness): When you choose books for young children, look for ones that have pictures of familiar things. Talk about the picture and then get the real object you talked about and show it to your child. By showing children the real object, you help them realize that pictures represent real things. Later they will also understand that printed words represent real things.

See Letters (Letter Knowledge): The letter your child is likely to be the most interested in is the first letter of his or her name. Make sure you point out that letter when you come to it in a book!

Tell a Story (Narrative Skills): Ask your child to “read” you a story, even though they can’t read yet.  Children can use the illustrations to make up their own story. They may veer away from the pictures, but that’s ok – your child is learning how to tell a story.

Make Sounds (Phonological Awareness): Sing the same songs over and over so your children learn them by heart – that way they can really start to hear and say the individual syllables of the words.

New Words (Vocabulary): By using specific names for similar things, like cat and kitten, you help your child learn new words and you help them understand differences between similar things.

For more information visit  Every Child Ready to Read @ Your Library