Early Literacy Series, Day 1: Just read!

For the second week in my Month of Series, I am going to share tips and tricks for early literacy development that you can do at home.  I'll be sharing my favorite ideas and links to additional resources.  I'm not an expert by any means, but I know what works for my kids might also work for yours. Of course, it might not.  All of these ideas can be tweaked to meet your child's individual needs.

So, day one: JUST READ.  Yeah, okay, you probably already knew that. Every child should be read to (or read, if they can) for 20 minutes a day. You can do it here and there throughout the day, or all in one sitting if your child likes to have downtime right before bed.  The important thing is the cumulative amount of time you spend reading together.  The more exposure our kids have to language and text, the more likely they are to be fluent readers.  We talk to our kids every day, but time spent with a book is time teaching them that our spoken language is made up of a written language.  Letters make words, words make sentences, and sentences tell us a story.  There is no wrong way to read a book to your kids, but here are some suggestions to get even more out of your story time:

1) Look at the pictures and talk about them.  Don't worry about the text, just take a "picture walk" through the book. If your child is old enough to discuss the pictures with you, ask them to tell you what is going on in the pictures. You can make predictions of what the story is going to be about and then check them by reading the text. Some books only have pictures specifically so that you and your child can make up the words to go with the text.

2) Alphabet hunt - If your kiddo knows his or her letters, ask them to find and identify letters on each page. You can also do this with familiar words or sight words, if your child knows any.

3) Trail your finger along the text as you read.  This draws attention to the fact that it is the words that tell the story.  As your kiddo learns words, you will be able to share in the reading of books.  I always pause when I get to a word RJ knows and he reads it for me.  It draws out the reading a bit, but it really gets him involved.

4) Have fun!  Use character voices - a high squeaky voice for a mouse, a deep voice for a lion, etc.  It adds to the "give and take" of the dialogue, and your child will love it!

Share your ideas on how you read to your kids below in the comments!  Do you have a favorite book?

Make any wall a word wall!

If you have a wall with nothing hanging on it, and a preschool aged kiddo that loves books and language play, you have got to check out word walls.  If you Google "word wall," all kinds of images come up.  Word walls are exactly what they sound like - they are an area where you display words, usually.  All you need is some alphabet cards and some word cards, and something to stick them to the wall.

I have done a different twist on it in my own classroom when I was teaching 2's. I used pictures.

Picture "word" wall

The only words I used in this picture word wall were the kids' names.  The rest were pictures of things that began with each letter's sound.  We did short vowel sounds - A for Alligator, E for Elephant, I for Igloo, O for Octopus, U for Umbrella.  With consonants we focused on the most common sound - for example, the hard "k" sound of the letter C.


RJ is three and is ready for sight words.  Sight words are the most common words you see in print.  Since the English language has some pretty complicated rules, "sound it out" isn't always an option for beginning readers.  Just like we memorize addition fact and multiplication tables in order to speed up the process of doing more complicated math, we memorize sight words in order to built speed and fluency with reading. 


RJ has been working with a great teacher all year, and I have been working with him this summer, so I decided to check out and see what sight words he knows and put those words on our word wall to start with.  Boy was I surprised!

Sight Words Word Wall

These are the words RJ knows so far.  Most of them are sight words but he also knows milk, hit, and play. All together, there are 27 words on the wall!  He knows many of the words on the Preprimer list of Dolch Sight Words. 


We are using our word wall to reinforce the words RJ already knows, and then he is using those words in other learning situations.  When we read a book, I trail my finger along the print and pause when I come to a word he knows, so we do a shared reading of the text.  We take words like at, it, and in and play word addition - for example, c + at = cat. You write C, make the sound, write at, and say "at," then blend the word together to make "cat."


I love working with my beginning reader.  He is so excited about his word wall, and I can't wait to see what words we add next!

I stay at home, and I won't apologize for it!

The whole age-old debate: Who has it harder? Working moms or Stay-at-home-moms? WMs work all day and still have to pick up kids from daycare, make dinner, do all of the things an at-home mom does.  SAHMs have a 24/7 job of house keeping, taking care of others before themselves, no sick days, no vacation days. Both have their perks as well. WM's have a career, hopefully a fulfilling one that provides extra income and makes the family comfortable.  She has life outside of her home and family.  A SAHM doesn't miss out on any of the big milestones of her children, because she's right there with them most of the time. I'm a SAHM and my sister is a WM.  We each have things we envy about each others lifestyles. We each have things that we know we wouldn't be able to stand. Both of us work hard and have healthy, happy families to show for it.

Recently I saw this floating around on Facebook: 

"Yes, my house can be a little messy at times, but I work a full time job, commute 4 hours round trip, and only have two days off a week. My husband works, too. If you work, and support your family, you understand. If you don't work, maybe you should get a job and see how the rest of us live, instead of making statements. Repost if you support the "real" working mothers out there!"

The first thing I thought when I read this was "Wow... I'm a measly husband-moocher-offer, and my house is STILL messy..." But the more I read it, the more it kind of offended me. "If you don't work, maybe you should get a job and see how the rest of us live.." 

I don't know that it is possible for me to have more respect for working moms and single moms. I cannot imagine doing what I do plus going to a 9 to 5, or doing it by myself.  But ALL MOMS WORK! My kids ARE my job, and I take them seriously. I work hard for them. That means that my house isn't always perfectly clean.  That means that there are days where I am ready to drop by the time my husband walks in the door. I don't keep a crazy schedule.  I don't try to line out my day.  I have a 3 year old and a 6 month old.  They are the schedule setters.  Some days they give me an easy schedule - they nap, they entertain themselves, and they are happy.  Other days they are sick, teething, don't sleep at night, are grouchy, and I spend my whole day hopping from one to the next trying to take care of what they need.  When I'm sick, I suck it up, unless I happen to get lucky enough to get sick on a weekend (ha!) in which case I have help.

I kind of miss the 9 to 5, but I don't envy WMs.  I know many of them get stuck with everything I just described, and more, on top of their careers.  But I won't apologize for being a SAHM, and I will absolutely defend my "job." SAHMs may not get a comment on their messy house (ha, I would), but I have heard all of the following:

"You're JUST a SAHM??" (incredulous look of shock) Yup. I am, and I love it.


"How do you find your life fulfilling when you have no career to show for it?" Well I guess happy healthy kids just can't top a successful career or anything...


"Are you going to go back to work when they start school?" Funny, I didn't realize I had ever LEFT work....

"You're a SAHM and your child goes to preschool?! Don't you feel lazy?"Yup... giving my kids social interaction for a few hours a day, a few days a week.... running errands without hauling them both in and out of strollers and carts.. Yup, you can call me lazy, works for me!

I am happy for you if you are a working mother who is happy.  I'm sad for you if you're a working mother that wants to stay home, because I know it sucks to be stuck doing something you don't want to do.  If  you have a career outside of the home, I applaud you. If you're a single mom, you rock!  Just please remember - I don't provide "financial" support to my family, but I provide all kinds of other support.  You support your family the best way you can, I will do the same. 

Word wall surprise!

I am going to set out to write about word walls tomorrow, since I just put one up in my house. RJ and I have been working on sight words, and I have been surprised at how many he knows. I shouldn't be, because his teacher this year was ah-maaaaa-zing. He can write all of his letters, upper and lower case, and he knows all of their sounds. He is learning how to sound words out. He can count on and on and can identify numbers as high as 9,999. Actually he can do 10,999 because we are working on anything to the left of the column is thousands.

So after I put up the letters for the word wall today,I decided to start off by putting only the ones he can identify up on the wall. I took out my set of pre-primer Dolch words and started showing him each one. He identified about half of them. He identified four words from the primer set. He also knows words that aren't in my cards like ball, milk, play, etc. I made cards for those words. He also knows the "it" family - he know i-t says "it" and that if you put an s in front of it, it says "sit," etc. Sit and hit also went up in the wall.

When we got all the cards up there and counted them, we had 27 words all together. I texted his teacher excitedly. She texted back "Don't forget the it, at, and an families. He knows all of those. And his friends' names."

I think I am going to have to find a bigger wall....

Early literacy with preschoolers

My whole world revolves around being a mom these days.  I love it that way. There was a time, however, when I did things other than be a mom.  I worked several jobs and got a college degree in Education.  Graduated with honors, actually (yes, I am bragging, but it was hard work!). I graduated in December and before I could get a job, I was pregnant with my first. Now that my son is three years old, I felt like it was time to start flexing those rusty teaching muscles. We did a week long lesson on a book, where he progressively took over reading the book for me.  When I posted the end of the week video on Facebook, people were impressed with my kiddo "reading" the book. He really more memorized it, although he does remember certain words from the book if I write them down and ask him what they say.

Here's how we did it. First, he is in a summer program with a wonderful teacher and one of her sight words of the week was "it."  I looked through his Brand New Readers and picked out a book that had the word "it" in it multiple times. It was a very repetitive story - the little girl does something to get the ball moving, the dog catches it.

Day 1: First I wrote down the word "it" and put it in our pocket chart on the wall in the kitchen. He loves having words in that chart. He very quickly learned that i-t- spells it. When I introduced the book for the first time, I showed him the pictures and read the description on the inside cover of the book (all Brand New Readers have this, it's a great tool).  We talked about the dog and the little girl and what they were doing.  Then I showed him the word "it" in the book and asked him "What does i-t spell?" When he answered correctly I said "Good! Every time you see the word it, I want YOU to say "IT!" We read the book through twice, with me pointing to the words as we went.

Day 2: I showed him the cover of the book and asked him if he remembered the title. He said "It says 'CATCH!'" *smarty pants* I asked him if he remembered what they were playing, he said they were going to play catch with a ball. Ball was repeated every other page, so when I started reading I paused at that word and asked him "Do you know what that says?" He said "Ball?" I said "Yes, so every time you see b-a-l-l, you can read it!" Catches was also repeated, so we did the same with catches. We read it twice through, this time with me holding his hand and trailing across the words while we read.

Day 3: My little smarty pants was able to read the book to me. He trailed the words with his fingers like a pro and looked at the picture if he came across a word he didn't know.  My hubby said "He just memorized it." Well... yeah, he did to an extent, but that's the point of sight words (which was the main focus).  So I made a game with the text of the book.  I wrote out the whole book in sentence strips.  RJ and I used them as a puzzle to put the story together.  I would read him a line, he would decide where it went in the story.  We built the story from title to end, then read it together. I would pop-quiz him on the more common words.

Day 4: I went out and bought a pocket chart to put our story puzzle into.  We ordered the story - this time, RJ was able to tell the difference between the action words throw, hit, and kick by using his beginning letter sounds. He was able to order the story himself.  I then gave him a pointer and had him read the words. I am going to try to upload a video below showing how he did:

Hopefully the edits will work and the video will turn right side up hahaha. He loved doing this every day.  The words he has retained from the story are "it" and "ball." The repetitive nature of the story gave him the confidence to read fluidly, and he loves using the pointer. I can't wait to start the next book with him!

Puddles

I got that from my in-laws this past birthday. I need another one that says something about moms and sick days. I was miserably ill today. My poor boys had to go to the doctor with me, and then to fill my prescription. RJ had a hard time waiting. He didn't want to wait for the iPad. He didn't want to walk nicely in the store. He didn't want to wait patiently for our lunch in the Target food avenue. We made it through lunch, picked up my meds, and headed for the front door, only to find it pouring down rain. We waited it out, because the last thing this sickly mom wanted to do is get wet trying to buckle the kids into their seats.

About 15 minutes later, we headed through the wet parking lot towards the car.  RJ, of course, stomped at the first puddle he could find. I said "Oh no! You aren't going to jump in every puddle you see, are you?" He said, "Oh.... Sorry mommy..."

That's when I realized that I was being THAT MOM again. The harried, frustrated, snapping mom. Trust me, anyone who has had a 3 year old boy probably understands. We all have a little bit of THAT MOM in us, but I like to think I'm in control of that most of the time. I save it for moments like the Buc-ees story.

Sickly mommy often turns ino THAT MOM way too easily. And RJ really is a great kid. And puddles are fun. I looked at my sweet boy, and said "You know what, jump with both feet when we get to this next one!" The look on his face was priceless, and the gleeful laughter made me feel better. For a moment.