How Can I Foster Reading Readiness?

Part 2. Providing pieces of the puzzle

Hello beautiful friends! Happy National Reading Month - as promised, I am going to spend this month talking about reading readiness. Let’s go!

A few weeks ago my neighbor dropped off a puzzle at our front door. I am a huge fan of puzzling. I love where my mind goes when I am in it — I may get a bit obsessive — staring at all the tiny pieces, sorting them by color and theme, always starting with the edge pieces first. It feels like blissful meditation to focus on the puzzle and zone out on the rest of the world.

However, I have two very helpful and involved children, the puzzle was 1000 pieces, and Beauty and the Beast themed. So, instead of blissful meditation we quickly devolved into ridiculous frustration. My fault for even cracking it open.

One agro-fueled trip to Goodwill later I came home with two age-appropriate puzzles and my fingers crossed that they had all the pieces. It was a bit of a gamble.

Reading is also a puzzle — this is not a metaphor. Think about it: our alphabet (or any language) is a series of strokes and lines, symbols that represent sounds, which follow certain rules (except for all the exceptions). And there are so many confusing exceptions. As a person who has done a lot of teaching young children pre-reading skills, it is astounding how often I find myself saying “well, it doesn’t make very much sense…” or “isn’t that funny?” These phrases can be secret powers though — encouraging the child to look at the word like a puzzle or a mystery to be solved — like a good joke that with some practice, they can be in on. We all get to be expert puzzlers, solving the riddle of reading. I am not going to promise you I have all the puzzle pieces, but over the years I have gathered some which have worked time and time again.

But even our best intentions aren’t foolproof. Life is a gamble. Some pieces of the puzzle get wet or go missing, the dog chews on one that falls to the floor, or a stray child pockets a piece – I have a friend who, in her more devious adolescent years, would deliberately pocket the puzzle piece just to mess with the puzzler. I would never trust her near a puzzle, though she swears she has changed. Chaos reigns.

This is to say that you can foster a great environment for reading, and still have a kid who struggles to enjoy picking a book, one who it seems won’t look at a book if you paid them. (Speaking of, what are your thoughts on paying kids to read? Drop a comment below!)

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LIT TIPS

Here are some of the pieces you can use to solve the reading puzzle:

1. READ TO YOUR KIDS — Is your kid a baby? This is the perfect time to start. The books don’t have to be baby content, when they are babies you can read aloud to them from whatever novel or newspaper article you are reading! Language exposure is foundational for reading. There are also great books for babies to interact with, like these indestructables, which are truly appropriately named, or books with flaps and mirrors are hilarious - a baby loves the crap outta themselves. Don’t limit yourself to baby-friendly books or underestimate your child’s interest, read longer picture books too, ones that include a simple story or fun sounds, or vibrant pictures. A few we love are All The World, Bear Snore On, Freight Train, and Demolition.

2. LANGUAGE IS EVERYWHERE — You don’t have to be quietly sitting, book in hand, to give your child building blocks for reading. Written language is everywhere. Stuck in traffic? Find letters out the window. Standing in line at the grocery store? Point out the letters you see all around you. Walking around the neighborhood? Read the neighborhood signs - STOP is a particularly popular one. When you point out letters, say their names, but also say what sound the letter makes! This is an introduction to learning phonemes (small units of sound represented by letters) and is a crucial piece of the puzzle.

3. KEEP IT INTERESTING — if you started a new hobby, but were always stuck in the beginners classes, you’d either never really improve or you’d get bored and quit. Keep pushing the boundaries of what your kid can do by reading longer books, books with more complicated storylines, and books with bigger unfamiliar words. Don’t let reading and stories become boring by limiting them to the bunny slopes.

4. READ. RINSE. REPEAT — repetition is your friend. Read books on repeat, take time to talk about what happens in the story and the pictures, and then read them again. While you are reading, draw your finger along the words as you say them, or point to the ones that rhyme, making that connection between the words you verbalize and the symbols on the page. Read the book again and again and again until you all know it by heart. Eventually, you could leave out a word, your finger hovering over it on the page, and your child will be able to yell it out. This isn’t strictly them reading, but it is creating a connection and confidence.

5. GIVE THEM SPACE — This might be the greatest and hardest part of all. At some point, learning to read becomes doing the hard work, and kids (or wait, humans in general because I also don’t love being watched while I am trying something new) can get cagey about the hard work, the failure, the frustrations. When my eldest started learning to read we were naturally VERY enthusiastic and it sort of freaked him out. He still mostly refuses to read to us unless it is his idea, and I don’t push it (or at least not too hard), but I also give him plenty of opportunity to try with words where I know he will succeed to build confidence. The more confident he gets, the more he slips into reading aloud without even thinking about it or hesitating.

6. MAKE IT FUN — A lot of our dinner lunch and breakfast conversations revolve around word games. Play rhyming games! Play a what-starts-with-this-letter game! Play what-letter-says-this-sound games! None of these require books, all of them can be silly, and silly word games create a positive association with reading. Our current favorite is playing a game where we tell one another what we love, but we leave out the first letter or sound: “I love -eese” for the other to guess “I love cheese!” My favorite moment so far is when my son was walking to the mailbox hollering at us “I love -ass! I LOVE ASS!” and we were desperately scrambling to get it right—Grass. Friends, he loves GRass. 

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FROM THE STAX

CAN I PLAY TOO? A PIGGIE AND GERALD BOOK by Mo Willems

Really, just get this entire series. Every book featuring Piggie and Gerald is pure early-reading gold. They are funny, they are sweet, they use great repetition without being annoying, and they are a hoot to read again and again. We love to each play a different character and read our lines, a fun family reading practice.

NARWHAL: UNICORN OF THE SEA by Ben Clanton

Narwhal and Jelly are best friends and extra cute to boot. Any book in this series is sure to make your whole family smile as you read and adventure along. With very simple pictures, text, and story this is also a fun book for building early reader confidence if they explore the pages on their own.

BROOM, ZOOM! by Caron Lee Cohen Illustrated by Sergio Ruzzier

As you can see, this was an often grabbed favorite by my littlest. Using repetition and rhyme, this book is more story in pictures than in words, but the words are fun and let even the youngest draw a connection between the picture on the page and the big bold rhyming words.

THE RACECAR ALPHABET by Brian Floca

Zoom through the alphabet with this alliterative and enlightening and not-so-traditional alphabet book, which highlights different letters and different aspects of an old-time thrilling race. You’ve got to do some work to unearth the alphabet, an invitation to talk about letter sounds, which I totally love.

FROG AND TOAD TOGETHER by Arnold Lobel

Frog and Toad are best of friends who go through all seasons of life together and whose different personalities bring balance to whatever comes their way. Could I even write a newsletter about early reading without Frog and Toad? Timelessly adorable and silly, every time I pick up this book I am reminded why it should be on every family’s shelf.

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I am so happy you are here. If you know someone who is helping raise readers feel free to share! Your sharing keeps me going. Welcome to all my new subscribers (still can’t believe it!) and thanks for your support.

See you next week and Happy reading Y’all!!