Why is it so important that parents/guardians
read to young children?

• Parents are with children many hours per day = much instruction time.
• Research shows that the more parents talk to their child and read to their child
the better they do in school.

Whenever an adult reads to a child, at least 4 important things happen:

1. Pleasurable Connection – children love to snuggle up with a loving adult, and they learn to connect reading with love. This connection is made with teachers, too, but they are not as important as family for making this connection.
2. Double Learning – both parent and child are learning from the book that they are reading.
3. Building Language Skills- While reading, adults pour sounds and syllables called words into the child’s ears.
4. Building Background Knowledge—children learn so much from books—about colors, numbers, geography, about trucks and building and bakeries and dinosaurs and bugs and space….


Early Reading First I CAN READ!
2007
Funded by the U.S. Department of Education