Reading Aloud to Children

As you come into our classroom you may notice our Home Reading chart.  It looks like this...

Most of you are familiar with it and use it daily.  Your child and you put on stickers every day for however many stories you read together the night before. This is a fun welcome to school routine but that is not the only purpose.  You may not have noticed the sign hanging above the chart.  It reads: "Reading aloud to children has been called the single most important activity for building the knowledge required for success in reading."
Reading aloud to our kiddos is very important.  Here at AAK 4's we even changed our daily schedule a few years ago to include a 20 minute story time.  Plus we read chapter books to them at nap time.   We think it is very important for you to do this with your child.  When your child gets to Kindergarten reading at least 20 minutes a day will be a required part of their daily homework.  Reading with your child will help them be more successful in elementary school. 

I read a great article on reading with children by Amanda Morgan.  It is called "Teach Your Baby to Read in his Sleep*  (*sort of) "   Check out how you can build your child's Reading skills at bedtime.

If you don't know who Amanda Morgan  is you should check out her blog.  It is an excellent resource for parents and teachers.  I took class from her a year or so ago and loved what she had to say.  She talks about how in this Pinterest driven world where there are so many "cute" ideas to do with our kids, we need to make sure we know the purpose behind those activities and the reason they are good for our kids.  She also post lots of parenting helps, advice ect.   Her blog is notjustcute.com

Hope you enjoy reading with  your child and helping them be more successful in school!