Written By: Ashley McCargish
“Read to him” it’s the number 1 thing any doctor has told me when I ask, “What can I do to best support him?”.
There is no wonder why, reading with your child at home improves their vocabulary, supports their understanding of the world around them, supports text connections, and more!
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In this post you will learn why reading at home is important, activities to support reading at home, and books appropriate to read at different ages. I’m also including a reading at home checklist! This will give you the tools & knowledge needed to know exactly what questions to ask your child while reading at home!
Why is reading at home important?
Reading at home has many benefits for the child including:
- Improves attention span
- Supports language development
- Introduces new vocabulary
- Improves reading comprehension and understanding of text
- Introduces new topics and ideas
- Improves imagination and open ended play
- Supports reading comprehension
- Helps students make connections between their world and written text
What books should I read with my child at home?
I have a great resource of books for 1 year olds you can find here. At this age children love interacting with the book, lifting the flaps, pushing buttons, and touch & feel type books.
When children get older it’s important that we begin reading books that get a little longer and have a bit more of a plot. Some books that my son really enjoyed around ages 2-3 are:
- The Noisy Noisy Farm By: Stephanie Stansbie
- A Potty For Me By: Karen Katz
- Dragons Love Tacos By: Adam Rubin & Daniel Salmieri
- How Do Dinosaur’s Say Goodnight? By: Jane Yolen
- Yellow Copter By: Kersten Hamilton.
Then going into preschool children should be reading longer books. My 3 year old loves the 5 minute story books like Peanuts By: Charles M. Schulz & Curious George By: H.A. Rey.
He also enjoys Bright Stanley & the Cave Monster By: Matt Buckingham. This is a story of a brave fish and his friends going into a cave.
Olivia By: Ian Falconer and Pete the Cat By: James Dean are excellent books for the preschool age! You can find great printables to go along with these books on Teachers Pay Teachers.
Finally as children transition into kindergarten they should be reading books that allow them to read basic sight words. They should also continue to be read books with plot and characters.
My favorite read aloud books during my years as a kindergarten teacher included books by Kevin Henkes books, Audrey Wood, and fairy tales (The 3 Little Pigs, Goldilocks and The 3 Bears, etc.).
Ways to incorporate reading at home?
Have no fear if you have a wiggly toddler at home that does not have time for being read to. I have you covered in “How to Get Your Busy Baby Reading with you Today”.
In that post you’ll find great ideas like …
- reading to them in the bath
- making it part of your daily routine
- reading signs during walks.
What kind of activities can I do with my child while reading at home?
I always suggest when using a book to teach a child that the first time you read it with them you make it fun and engaging. This will help them later when you go beyond the text to support their reading skills using the book.
I love the book “Skunk in a Bunk” because there are a lot of lessons and activities that you can do with this book to support your child in their reading.
Let’s take a look at the book “Skunk in My Bunk” by Christopher Cerf and discuss all the ways you can teach your child using this book!
Rhyming
It’s important that young child can hear the sounds of words. It will help support them with blending, decoding, and spelling later in life. Lucky for you this book (and lots of others) makes that EASY!
However Skunk in a Bunk has rhyming words on every page. Here are some ideas of quick lessons you can do on the couch while looking at the book together:
- Ask them for another word that rhymes with the lists given, if they struggle you can help them.
- Show them that the beginning sound of each word is different. An example of this is on page 4 it lists goat, coat, boat, moat. You can discuss with them that the beginning sounds in each word are different than each other, and that its the ending of the word that sounds the same.
- Ask them if another word rhymes with that set. You would say “goat, coat, boat, moat, Box… what word doesn’t rhyme?!” If they aren’t sure give them the answer, “box doesn’t sound the same!”
Vocabulary Words
While reading with children it’s a great idea to be looking for new or interesting vocabulary words your child might not know.
It’s important that we do not assume that a child knows what the word means just because its book they are read to often.
When preparing for a read aloud as a teacher I will look through a book and make a list of new words on a post it. This gives me a heads up of new words to make a point of when reading.
As a mom I look for new or unknown words while reading (usually the same book over and over).
Teachers use context clues (words around the unknown words and the pictures) to help children understand what these words mean.
I have listed below some of the vocabulary words in the book “Skunk in a Bunk” that would be great to discuss with your child.
- moat
- jig
- scrub
- delish
- muck
To further reinforce these words you could have your child act them out, draw them during their creative time, and use them in context during your day.
During bath time I might say “it’s time to scrub you down!” or “that toy is a mess, can you scrub and get it cleaned”. Sometimes using it in context is all they need to better understand it.
What is inferencing and why should I teach it?
Authors don’t always tell you what happened or how a character is feeling in the text. It’s up to the reader to use the text pictures and their own background knowledge to come up with solutions.
This is inferencing, it is simply using information from the text and background knowledge to make sense of an unknown word or what is happening in the text. The author doesn’t tell you what happened, you have to figure it out. In the teaching world we say it’s kind of like being a detective.
Teaching our children this wonderful comprehension strategy can be done starting with a simple book like this!
This book is great for teaching inferencing because it doesn’t have a lot of words. It forces the child to make conclusions about the characters using their background knowledge and the pictures.
Let’s look at the story in the book “Skunk in My Bunk” when Trish eats the fish. Nowhere in the text does it say that Trish eats the fish so a great way to use this skill would be to ask your child, “What happened to the fish?” after it shows that fish is off of the plate.
They’ll use the pictures and their background knowledge that Trish ate the fish. She is smiling after the fish is gone, therefore we can infer that she is happy about it.
Another place where your child needs to use inferencing is the cop story in this story the cop goes into a shop and drops some pop. The book doesn’t say that the cop made a mess or that the cop is upset so your child has to use what they already know about spilling something and the pictures to infer that the cop is upset that she made a mess in the shop.
My favorite place to talk about inferencing in this story is the very last part of the book. It’s actually the back cover, the boy is standing by his tent looking at the skunk through the window in his bunk.
Your child has to infer that he can’t get the skunk to leave. This causes the boy to be upset that he has to sleep in the tent.
There aren’t any words to go along with this picture so it’s up to your child to figure out how the boy is feeling and why there’s a tent set up.
Anytime you read with your child it is supporting their language and more!
Please leave a comment to let me know what books your kids are loving. I’d love to hear how you support their reading while doing so!
If you have any books that you would like me to dig deeper into that your child loves, please leave it in the comments below.
I’d love to look at more books and make this a series on my blog! Lastly please share this post with a friend, teacher or caretaker who is looking to take their at home reading game to the next level!
Love, Ashley E
