Fostering Healthy Relationship Between Children & Literacy

How to teach your children to read

1. Relevant literacy: When teaching children literacy, you can put the words of the same relevancy together.
2. Environmental literacy: You can attach text or verbal instructions to the corresponding physical objects, such as stickers on the refrigerator that read “Refrigerator”.
3. Action literacy: Parents can let their children know the word by doing actions, so that the child can be both hands and brains.
4. Children’s song literacy: Children’s songs and poems that are so catchy are children’s favorite and easy to accept. 
5. Picture literacy: Parents can make many literacy cards with pictures and texts or collect some pictures to teach children literacy. 

What are literacy games

1. Fishing literacy

Draw the word card as a fish on the ground. When an adult reads a word, the child must catch that word, and only when he reads that word does he count as catching a fish. 

2. Literacy

When children eat, they are often happiest. At this time, teaching him literacy will increase his interest. For example, teach “spin” and “duo” when cutting pineapple.

3. Storytelling

Tell the child a story, write down the main characters and key plots of the story on the blackboard to recognize, read it after telling the story, and let the child recognize it again when they repeat it. 

4. Stepping on words to cross the river to read and write

Draw two parallel straight lines on the ground as a river, and put a number of word cards in the middle of the river as a “bridge”. The child must cross the “river” from the “bridge” and read a word before stepping forward.

The best age for literacy

 Between the ages of 3-7, the child grows up slowly, and the percentage of children who correctly recognize and distinguish the graphics gradually increases. But at the age of 3-4, children are most sensitive to the perception of graphics. 

Misunderstanding of teaching children literacy

1. Many people think that the earlier the child can read, the smarter the child is.  Education is not fast-track, and parents should pay attention to potential effects, accumulation effects and long-term effects.
2. Teaching literacy to young children is different from traditional literacy. Everything is based on children’s interests, and only requires recognition and speaking, not writing.  
3. Some parents believe that teaching children literacy is scientific early education, and children will be successful in the future. This concept is very one-sided.

Precautions for teaching literacy

1. Do not compare with neighbors or children of the same age , as this will hurt your children‘s  self-esteem.
2. Treat literacy as a game, not as a task, and not set a quota.
3. Start with children listening to a picture book with words, gradually transitioning to reading the sentences.
4. You can spell them into words and then synthesize sentences. For example, Water, melon, watermelon, eat watermelon, I eat watermelon.
5. Teach children literacy only when they are interested.