Literacy development is a crucial aspect of your child’s development. It’s the basis for performing well academically, managing money and working, developing independence, and socialising with people, throughout their life.
However, before your preschooler learns to read & write, they need to develop solid building blocks for literacy – the ability to understand, speak, listen, watch, and draw. Also, your child needs to develop a good understanding of spoken sounds, letters and the connection between them. For this to happen, they need plenty of experience with:
- Letters and words – Their sounds, names and shapes
- Objects & pictures – How to use words to describe them while talking
- Sounds – How words start, end and rhyme with the same letters; how they can be formed by combining various sounds and, broken up into syllables and so on.
Steps To Take
There are many different ways in which you can help in these areas and boost your preschooler’s early literacy development. This is how you go about it:
- Communicate with your child
- Read together
- Play with sounds and rhymes with your child.
While this may seem like a lot of work, you can incorporate it in a fun way into your daily life at home so that your child learns while having fun. It doesn’t feel like you are teaching, and they don’t feel like they are being compelled to learn something.
All language experiences that preschoolers form have strong brain connections. And as they grow, they use these connections for understanding, thinking and language. Without activities such as reading, singing and talking, the brain cannot develop these vital connections. There are various things that you need to focus on while helping your preschooler develop literacy the right way.
Communication
Communicating all the time with your child helps to develop their ability to listen, speak, as well as understand as they get older. For example, you may notice your children responds to baby talk and smiles when they are very young. They might also try to imitate your facial expressions and sounds. Some things you can do include:
- Make every effort to repeat the sounds and words your child says. This encourages two-way conversation and helps in building language skills. Use baby talk when you can and speak slowly, and modulate your voice, while emphasising and repeating words. This will allow your baby to understand words and how to put language together.
Other Ways To Improve a Child’s Learning Ability
- Story-telling and singing songs to them is another way to boost this learning.
- Imitate their language and words while teaching them the correct way to form them.
- Show them books that will fuel their imagination and keep them interested in getting to know more.
- Help them learn words and syllables and make a consistent effort to help them increase their vocabulary. Move one step higher at a steady pace so that it improves their problem-solving skills and thinking ability.
- Always encourage them to share their experiences from the hours they spend at preschool.
- Focus on rhyming as it’s a great way to teach preschoolers the connection between words and sounds.
There are numerous ways to keep children interested in learning more with every passing day. When you make a consistent effort, learning will slowly become a habit with your child. They will develop a thirst to know more about the world around them and will make more significant efforts to read new things and explore new concepts as they grow up.
We at Clovel Childcare and Early Learning Centre, provide a very nurturing environment for children to learn and grow. For any information about our services, give us a call at 02 9199 0294 or fill in this contact us form
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Clovel Childcare
1300 863 986
