Category Archives: learning in infancy

How does an almost two-year-old read?

Posted on September 16, 2018 | Leave a comment

How does an almost two- year-old “read”? What does such a tiny child “read”? How can we encourage the reading habit in such a tike?

I spent a week in early September with a 21-month-old who wanted me to “read” to him many times daily. He taught me:

Toddlers love to hold books, turn their pages, point to objects they recognize and name those words.

They do not like to be read paragraph-long passages.

They do like to be read text if it is short. “Brown bear, brown bear, what do you see?” is an example of text that works. Single syllable words, words the child knows, words which are repeated, tiny sentences—these hold a child’s interest just long enough before he wants to turn the page.

Pint-sized cardboard books are easy for a toddler to hold. The pages are easy to turn. And the cardboard is able to withstand the rough handling that a tiny child gives.

“Reading” often means “studying” a picture to discover what it holds. “Balloon!” he might shout, or “Piggy eat.”

Order of pages is arbitrary to a tiny child. Sometimes he will prefer to skip some pages to head right for the picture he prefers. Sometimes he will flip back and forth, making a connection between one page and another. For example, he might find the moon on one page and then go back to a previous page to find the moon there.

Simple drawings are best. Bright colors with plain backgrounds help the child to focus.

Animals—especially baby animals with their mothers—fascinate many children. But one time an adult horse might be a “mommy” and another time that same image is a “daddy.” There’s no need to correct.

Touchable books captivate toddlers. A child eagerly strokes books with inserted fabric for a sandpapery pig’s nose or a furry dog’s ear. Books with flaps are fun to open even if the child has opened the same flap many times. Books with cutouts—like the holes that the Hungry Caterpillar eats—are just the right size for a little one to stick his finger into.

Many times, you, the adult, needn’t read a word. Rather you might wait for the child to take the lead. He might point to a picture and say a word. You might repeat his word to show you are listening or to offer correct pronunciation.

Many times all he wants is for you to listen, to share his reading time without distraction. By being willing to focus only on him, to listen wholeheartedly, you teach the child that you value what he is doing. Your unhurried presence tells the child that this activity—reading—is important.

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Posted in board books, how to make learning fun, illustrated books, learning in infancy, picture books, pronunciation of words, reading readiness., reading tips, teaching tips, vocabulary

Benefit of reading to children: reduced hyperactivity

Posted on May 6, 2018 | Leave a comment

Want to improve your baby’s, toddler’s or preschooler’s behavior? Read to your children. And play with your children.

That’s the conclusion of a study reported in the April issue of Pediatrics. Two sets of children, one from birth to about three years old, and another from three to five years old, were studied. Parents were videoed reading to their children or actively playing with the children, and later the parents’ positive interactions were reinforced by the researchers.

The results show that both groups of children’s behavior benefited from the active reading and play by parents, compared with control groups of children. Hyperactivity at the time the child started school was reduced compared to hyperactivity in a control group, and remained lower for one and a half years.

The researchers recommend that pediatric primary care pediatric practices encourage parents to read and play actively with their babies, toddlers and preschoolers in order to achieve more desirable behavior in the children.

For more information on the study, got to http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/early/2018/04/05/peds.2017-3393.

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Posted in hyperactivity, learning, learning in infancy, reading research, teaching tips

How to Raise a Reader, according to The New York Times

Posted on July 3, 2017 | Leave a comment

The New York Times published an excellent article last month entitled, “How to Raise a Reader.” You might find the article at your library in the Book Review section. It is worth the effort. Here are some highlights from “How to Raise a Reader.”

Become a reader yourself. If you have let your reading habit slip, reacquaint yourself with the print world.

Read aloud to your infant. Your reading material might be a medical journal or Dr. Seuss. The content doesn’t matter to an infant. What does matter is that you make eye contact with your child, use voice inflection, and read in the normal rhythms of your language. If the baby responds with baby sounds, respond in kind.

Read aloud to your toddler. Encourage your child to link the sound of your voice reading to him with strong, positive emotions. Read at bedtime and during daytime too. Offer your child variety in picture books, but respect his or her preferences, even if that means reading “Go, Dog, Go” night after night. When the child interrupts, that shows he is engaged. Stop and respond. Finishing a book isn’t all that important at this age nor is reading every word.

Continue to read aloud to your emerging reader. Once your child shows interest in letters and words, keep reading to him or her. Encourage her to join in, but don’t pull back now. She shouldn’t think of reading as work. She should think of it as fun. Allow your child to develop reading skills at her own pace, but if you suspect problems, follow through with her teacher.

Continue to read aloud to your early reader. Take him or her to the library or book store. Expand his selections from fiction to nonfiction. Ask him and his friends what they are reading and discuss their preferences. Let your child stay up a bit later if she reads in bed. If your child prefers comic books or graphic novels, or if he wants to read about his favorite video game, be thrilled. He’s reading.

Stash reading materials throughout the house. On the coffee table, in the bathroom, or in the bedroom, show off books, magazines and other reading materials to encourage reading.

Help your child build a personal library. Make a bookcase part of the child’s bedroom or a children’s section of books part of your home library. Give books as gifts and rewards. Bring home armloads of books from the library. Celebrate your child’s first library card with family stories of other first library cards.

This wonderful New York Times article goes on to describe the kinds of books children are ready for at different times in their lives. Enjoy.

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Posted in asking questions, early childhood education, how to make learning fun, learning in infancy, listening, picture books, practice reading skills, reading strategies, reading tips, teaching tips

Is my child on schedule to read?

Posted on April 11, 2017 | Leave a comment

The US Department of Education has put together a list of accomplishments* relating to talking and reading for children from birth to six years old. This list shows the growth of typical children developing normally, but variations exist. By seven years old, most children are reading.

From birth to age 3, most babies and toddlers become able to

Make sounds that imitate the tones and rhythms that adults use when talking.
Respond to gestures and facial expressions.
Begin to associate words they hear frequently with what the words mean.
Make cooing, babbling sounds in the crib, which gives way to enjoying rhyming and nonsense word games with a parent or caregiver.
Play along in games such as “peek-a-boo” and “pat-a-cake.”
Handle objects such as board books and alphabet blocks in their play.
Recognize certain books by their covers.
Pretend to read books.
Understand how books should be handled.
Share books with an adult as a routine part of life.
Name some objects in a book.
Talk about characters in books.
Look at pictures in books and realize they are symbols of real things.
Listen to stories.
Ask or demand that adults read or write with them.
Begin to pay attention to specific print such as the first letters of their names.
Scribble with a purpose (trying to write or draw something).
Produce some letter-like forms and scribbles that resemble, in some way, writing.

From ages 3-4, most preschoolers become able to

Enjoy listening to and talking about storybooks.
Understand that print carries a message.
Make attempts to read and write.
Identify familiar signs and labels.
Participate in rhyming games.
Identify some letters and make some letter-sound matches.
Use known letters (or their best attempt to write the letters) to represent written language especially for meaningful words like their names or phrases such as “I love you.”

At age 5, most kindergartners become able to

mother works with child reading story book

Sound as if they are reading when they pretend to read.
Enjoy being read to.
Retell simple stories.
Use descriptive language to explain or to ask questions.
Recognize letters and letter-sound matches.
Show familiarity with rhyming and beginning sounds.
Understand that print is read left-to-right and top-to-bottom.
Begin to match spoken words with written ones.
Begin to write letters of the alphabet and some words they use and hear often.
Begin to write stories with some readable parts.

At age 6, most first-graders can

Read and retell familiar stories.
Use a variety of ways to help with reading a story such as rereading, predicting what will happen, asking questions, or using visual cues or pictures.
Decide on their own to use reading and writing for different purposes;
Read some things aloud with ease.
Identify new words by using letter-sound matches, parts of words and their understanding of the rest of a story or printed item.
Identify an increasing number of words by sight.
Sound out and represent major sounds in a word when trying to spell.
Write about topics that mean a lot to them.
Try to use some punctuation marks and capitalization.

^*Based on information from Preventing Reading Difficulties in Young Children, a report of the National Research Council, by the Committee on the Prevention of Reading Difficulties in Young Children, 1998; and from the Joint Position Statement of the International Reading Association (IRA) and the National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC), 1998.

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Posted in ABC's, asking questions, kindergarten readiness, learning in infancy, letter sounds, literacy, phonics, picture books, reading readiness., reading research, US education

Talk to babies, even before they are born

Posted on February 26, 2017 | Leave a comment

Recently I visited my two-month-old grandson for a week. As much as possible, I held him. And when he was awake, I talked to him.

EPSON MFP image

I would look into his alert grey eyes and jabber on and on—about the inch of snow expected, about a book I had read, about what a terrible burper he was. I used the same adult vocabulary I would use to talk to you but perhaps with more inflection and facial animation.

His eyes would follow me but mostly he would listen—listen to me describing the soft, touchable fabric of his onesie, or listen to my theories about why he slept so little. I would ask him questions. “What do you want for lunch? Milk or milk? Do you want to look over my shoulder or look straight ahead? How’s your diaper?” He stared back attentively at first, but by the end of the week when I would talk to him, he would smile, quiver and say, “oo, oo,” the only sound he could make.

Now there is research which confirms that babies not only hear before birth but once they are born, they prefer to hear the language they have heard in utero. Above all newborns prefer to hear the voice of their mothers, but next in priority they prefer to hear the voices of people who speak the same language as the mother, voices with the same rhythms.

We know that phonemes—the basic sound units of language—can be recognized by new babies in the weeks following birth. Previously it was thought that babies couldn’t recognize slight differences in language sounds until the babies were several months old. But now we know that babies’ sound perception and preference begins in the womb.

How can we help new babies to develop language skills?

EPSON MFP image

Pregnant women should talk to their babies before birth. They should provide opportunities for unborn children to hear language spoken. This can mean babies’ overhearing conversations between mother and father; it can mean babies’ overhearing phone conversations or radio news; it can mean babies’ hearing the mother talk to herself. Little ears are listening, so we should give them language to hear.

Newborn babies are far from “empty-headed.” Already they have heard hundreds, maybe thousands of hours of spoken language, and have developed a preference for the language of their mothers. Once born, babies are refining their understanding of that language’s sounds as they listen to their caregivers’ speech. We should provide opportunities for babies to hear speech—while mothers are feeding babies, while caregivers are changing babies’ diapers, while grandparents are holding babies.

Babies’ brains are functioning at an abstract level from their earliest days. They hear phonemes like the sound of “m” in “milk,” and then hear that same “m” sound in “mom,” and learn that the same sounds are used over and over with different results. Years later, they will take this knowledge and apply it when they learn to read.

Did you know that according to a 1995 study*, the most important thing we can do while caring for a child is to talk to the child? Or that the three-year-old children of well educated, professional parents hear three times as many words as the three-year-old children of poorly educated parents?

In fact if you listen to the vocabulary of a child, you can predict his success in life. That’s how strong the correlation is between vocabulary and career success.

Talk, talk, talk, talk, talk to your children, including your babies. If you have never chatted with an infant, swallow your pride and allow yourself to seem foolish. It’s one of the best things you can do to ensure your child’s future success.

*Hart, B and Risley, T. (1995). Meaningful differences in the everyday experiences of young American children. Baltimore: Paul Brookes.