Preschool Reading

Preschool reading activities lay the foundation for a child's later learning. Tips for encouraging your children to become life-long readers.

Before you read this page, please ensure that you have read the preceding parts of this article series:

1. Introduction and Reading with Babies & Toddlers
2. Preschool Reading Together - below
3. Preschool Reading Activities and Games
4.The Benefits of Reading with Children

Preschool Reading Together

As your child matures and her preschool reading skills develop, you will be able to share books with more complex story lines.

Picture books will still be favourites, but they will also enjoy appropriate chapter books that you read aloud.

Experts say that until the age of about 7 or 8 years, many children struggle to differentiate between fantasy and reality, between true stories and fiction, so choose the books you read to your children carefully.

I prefer to avoid traditional children's fairy tales with their supernatural or super-evil characters at this stage! Later when the children are older and able to discern between fiction and reality, they may be acquainted with this genre of our literary culture.

In fact, at age 5, one of my children asked me to stop reading The Wizard of Oz as he did not like the parts about the wicked witches. He found it too scary!

As your child's linguistic ability grows, begin to talk about the actions and events in the story books you read. Ask questions like, "What is (the character) doing?", "Where is she going?" and "What do you think is going to happen?" etc.

Busy books - those books with pictures filled with dozens of characters and objects are also fun to encourage the children to talk about as are text free books, which require you or your child to make up the words and tell the story yourself.

Continue to read a variety of poems and nursery rhymes with your children as rhyming verse has many benefits to their language skills. Click here for my article The Benefits of Preschool Songs and Nursery Rhymes.

Since your child's concentration span will be increasing, she may also enjoy listening to stories on tape or CD, especially when traveling long distances in the car.

By now, your child may begin to recognize letters and numbers and you may be tempted to begin actively teaching her preschool reading skills. Some children have been known to read as early as age 4, but these are the exceptions. Tips for teaching children that are ready to read will follow, but don't rush this, there are still many benefits to be enjoyed by reading together.

Children who are read to and encouraged to explore their world, will want to learn to read and write in their own time, and will also require much less 'teaching', if they are not pressured to do so before they are ready.

Before you rush to give your child what you think is an advantage, be sure to read the book Better Late Than Early, which I strongly recommend, or at least my article based on their research and my own, Don't Start Too Early.

Picture books that my preschool children have loved to read over and over:

Chapter books for reading with children:

Grandma's Attic
Granny Han's Breakfast
Twenty and Ten
Mr Popper's Penguins

Search for them on Amazon or Kalahari, by using the links below:

Top of Preschool Reading

Part 3: Preschool Reading Activities and Games

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