February is I Love to Read month, and at Brightling it’s a big deal. We read together and engage in literacy-building activities every single day, all year long… so when the calendar reminds us to *celebrate* reading, we step right up!
Building literacy at home
It’s never too early to start building a love of reading – and the best way to build a love of reading… is to read.
For your little ones, reading first enters their lives as that thing they do cuddled up in your arms, then snuggled together before bed as they grow. Really, reading gets a great start.
But there are many more ways we can help kids grow into enthusiastic, confident readers. We integrate these into our daily activities at Brightling in age-appropriate ways, and you can practice them at home, too. Check out this article for some great ideas.
Storytelling fun
To help you get started, you can download our “Tell me a story!” sheet. Cut out the nine squares (or, if your kiddo can manage the scissors, you can supervise as they do it), and then have them lay out the squares in the right order to make up a story.
Then, ask them to tell you the story, pointing to each picture as they move along.
Once they’ve mastered that, you can make a game of it – taking turns setting up the pictures in different sequences and challenging each other to make up the stories to go with them. The sillier the better!
You’ll make storytelling one of their favourite together-time activities now, and help set them up for a lifetime of reading.