What Your Child Needs To Be Able To Do BEFORE They Learn To Read and Write!

There are MANY skills that go into being able to read a book, and many times parents don't realize that they CAN give their child an advantage by teaching certain pre-reading skills.  I am creating a bulleted list for you below, so that you can see some of the skills that are necessary for a child to be able to read AND write.  Also, we will be following up with several posts over the next few days to help you teach your child in these areas.  Of course, we will look at these in depth in the coming weeks. This checklist is just to get your started!

Can your child do the following?

• Rhyme - Rhyming is an ESSENTIAL pre-school skill that every child can learn.  However, many times, students with reading difficulties are not/were not able to rhyme at an early age. Ask your child to come up with a word that rhymes with mop, cat, hit, or log).  This is a good indicator of whether or not they have mastered this skill.
• Break a word apart- This is called segmenting words among teachers.  Ask your child to break the word dog into three sounds "d"- "o"-"g."  If they are able to clearly break those sounds apart, then they can segment.  This is what we call Phonemic Awareness. It means that children can manipulate sounds in words.
• Blend the word back together- Say the separate sounds in mop as "m"-"o"-"p."  Can your child blend these sounds back together. This is the Phonemic Awareness skill of blending.  We have many activities that we will be teaching you for both phonemic awareness activities!
• Pencil Grip- Is your child able to hold a pencil.  Have you given him/her plenty of opportunities to color with crayons, pencils, and other media.  It is important that students have pletny of exposure to acitivites that involve coloring, drawing, art work, etc. This helps them gain the fine motor skills they need to be able to hold a pencil correctly when they are older.  For exmaple, children who have been neglected often have to fend for themselves and have too much fine motor control, because they have had to do many things that other children haven't, like pour milk on their cereal, open food containers, etc. Somtimes children might have a parent who provides basic needs, but doesn't allow for educational activities that promote fine motor control, and these students have very weak muscle definition in their hands.  Their hands tend to resemble baby hands.
• Cut with scissors- I know this can be scary as a parent, but if you use children's scissors, this can be MUCH less painful! Downloading printables where your child can cut out shapes will also help them gain fine motor control. 

Now for the BASIC BEGINNING READER:

• Letter Names- Can your child identiy letters? Start with the letters in their name, or the letters in their friends' names.  We will be posting MUCH about this topic in the future. This is just a checklist to give you a starting point! Also, there are 26 letters (upper and lower case) when you include the funky "a" and the funky "g" as I call them!
• Letter Sounds-Most consonant sounds stay the same no matter where you live in the United States. However, vowel sounds vary DRASTICALLY depending on accent! We will try have a You Tube video up in a couple of weeks to help you in this area!

Here are some other pre-reading links that can help you get started:
http://www.okaloosa.k12.fl.us/south/early_reading_skills.htm

Phonics and the Beginning Reader

http://www.readingrockets.org/article/30999/