Helping Your Children Learn to Read Starts Before You Know It

Responding to your infant's cooing, talking to your infant or toddler, singing songs and reciting rhymes, making the sounds of animals as you see them in books, moving or clapping to the beat of music, and reading stories to your child are all listening skills that contribute to your child's ability to read when he or she gets older.

Early literacy skills include listening, speaking, reading and writing.  When children are young, the four skills develop at the same time.  Among developmentally delayed children these skills may develop more slowly.  It is necessary that parents recognize the importance of these four skills and support various literacy building activities in their home.

• Be sure to encourage your child to ask for what they want, and not just point
• Engage and ask your child about their day, and stories they heard
• Teach children manners, sing rhymes, explain new vocabulary in books, and show interest in what they have to say
• As children to participate in making phone calls
• Use communication boards for children who cannot speak
• READ TO YOUR CHILD, and expose your child to as many books, words, and signs as possible. 
• Provide lots of opportunities to play with toys that develop grasp and fine motor control like puzzles, Play Dough, beads, etc.
• Provide opportunities for your child to draw and write.  All these things & more will contribute to their ability to read later.