Talking, singing, reading, writing and playing: Fun and simple steps to help get every child ready to read @ your library.

The Los Alamos County Library System has an exciting series of workshops underway designed to help get Every Child Ready to Read^®. Mesa Public Library will present the second Every Child Ready to Read workshop for parents and caregivers from 3:30-4:30 p.m. Saturday, March 3.

(Note: This workshop is for adults only; children will benefit from what their parents or caregivers learn – but not during this session; the last workshop in the series will be for both children and adults.)

This workshop will further develop skills explored in the first workshop held last October but will still be covering the basics of the five early literacy skills. If participants attended the first one, they will still find new material at the second one but participants don’t need to have attended the first one to attend this one.

There will be two more workshops to follow to be held later in 2012, but this is the last “intro” workshop. The next one will focus on integrating science and technology skills to encourage early literacy and the fourth and final session will involve child/parent participation.

Parents and caregivers can give children a tremendous advantage in school and in life by helping prepare them for reading success.

For more details or to register, stop by the Youth Services desk at Mesa or the White Rock Branch. Call 662-8258 or pick up a schedule of upcoming Every Child Ready to Read^® workshops at the library. Also, visit www.losalamosnm.us/library and click on the Kids icon.

About Every Child Ready to Read:

Research shows that children who develop essential language and other early literacy skills before they start kindergarten become better readers. Children who do not know these skills when they begin school have a more difficult time learning to read.

At the library’s Every Child Ready to Read^® workshops, parents and other caregivers can learn how to develop these important skills, which:

• Demonstrate how to help children learn early literacy skills.
• Engage adults and children in fun activities that use simple but powerful learning experiences.
• Send parents and caregivers home with early literacy activities to incorporate into everyday routines.

Every Child Ready to Read Helpful Information:

What the research says:

• Learning to read and write is essential to school success. Children who are good readers are usually the most successful learners.
• Learning to read is a primary focus of the first years of school. However, learning to read begins long before children start school.
• Many children don’t develop essential early literacy skills before they go to school. This is one of the reasons so many children struggle with reading in the lower elementary grades.
• There is nearly a 90 percent probability that a child will remain a poor reader at the end of the fourth grade if he or she is a poor reader at the end of the first grade.
• Children who develop early literacy skills before they start school have a great advantage. They are ready to learn to read once they begin school.
• Engaging children in fun and powerful activities every day helps them develop early literacy skills and get ready to read. These activities or practices are talking, singing, reading, writing, and playing.

How to get your child ready to read even when you’re on the go:

You can help children learn pre-reading skills while you’re in the car, in the grocery store, or anywhere you and your children can talk. Here’s an example, from an Every Child Ready to Read^® workshop, of an activity you can do anywhere:

Background

Hearing the different sounds that make up words is an important early literacy skill. Most children who have difficulty reading have trouble with distinguishing the distinct sounds that make up words.

Activities

Help children play with the sounds in words at ages two, three, and four. This will help them sound out words when they begin to read.

One of the best ways to develop this skill is by saying nursery rhymes and singing songs with rhyming words. Ask a youth librarian for the best rhyming books for your child’s age. You and your child can say the rhymes as you’re getting ready in the morning, during the day as you go from one activity to another, or in the evening as you prepare dinner or get ready for bed.

Make up your own rhyming words. Take a simple word like “look.” Ask your child to create new words by changing the sound at the beginning of a word: book, cook, hook, mook, nook, took, wook. Talk about which are real words.

Say a familiar rhyme and change a sound in one word. Ask which word is different. For example, “Mary had a little bamb.” Or “Little Bo-Peep has lost her sheet.”