Wednesday, March 05, 2008

Learning To Read: Why Is Rhyme Important?

Learning to read is one of the toughest and most important tasks a young child faces. A child's successful accomplishment of this feat is one of the strongest indicators of future success--and a child's struggle with reading is one of the strongest indicators of future failure. There are many things that parents can do to help ensure that their child is successful when learning to read and one of the keys is making sure that rhyme is a part of your child's early life. There are three important reasons why rhyme is important to learning to read.

One key reason why rhyme is important is that it is fun. Playing with rhyme is learning but because it is just that -- playing -- children are willing to spend a lot of time rhyming and learning more about rhyme. This makes rhyme a great teaching tool and a great motivator for learning. Rhymes are easier to learn and remember than non-rhymes and that is why many learning tools for older children and adults still include rhyme.

Rhyme is important to emergent literacy and learning to read because it teaches children about the language. Rhyming helps children learn about word families such as let, met, pet, wet, and get. Rhyming also teaches children the sound of the language. Other important skills include phonological awareness, the ability to notice and work with the sounds in language. Rhymes help children with phonemic awareness, which is the knowledge that phonemes are the smallest units of sounds that make up words. This awareness leads to reading and writing success.

Rhyme also teaches children who are learning to read about the patterns and structures of both spoken and written language. Songs and rhymes expose your child to the rhythm of the language. This will help them read with some animation in their voice instead of just a monotone. Rhyme also prepares children to make predictions while learning words and gives them crucial decoding skills.

While learning to read is difficult and challenging for most children, rhyme can help make the task both easier and more fun, teach important language skills, and teach language patterns and structure. These three benefits are important reasons to make rhyme a part of your child's early childhood.

Deanna Mascle shares more ways to use rhyme when learning to read with the free ebook "Rhyming To Reading" at http://rhymingtoreading.info

Activity Preschool Songs: Why teach your preschooler using rhyme and song?

You may have noticed the prevalence of rhyme in children's books and songs, but have you ever wondered why? There are several reasons why educators, authors, and song writers who target young children use rhyme so much.

The first and simplest reason that rhyme and song are such an important part of early childhood education is that they are fun and encourage children to be active participants in the preschool learning activity at hand. Children love rhyme and song and early childhood educators have long recognized the benefits of using these techniques based on simple anecdotal evidence but now studies show that indeed rhythm and rhyme can help children learn more effectively.

Rhyme also helps children learn important foundational skills for reading. Reading is much more involved than simply learning to recognize that the shapes and squiggles on a page actually resolve into words and meaning. Learning to read also means learning about language and understanding the elements of that language. Once children understand how language works and the basic building blocks of words and sentences then learning to read is much easier for them. Rhyme is an essential part of this process.

Preschool songs are also a great way to increase children's vocabulary and knowledge of the world. Many preschool songs are actually informative and instructive about various aspects of culture and the world, but in addition many movement songs also teach children important aspects of relationships and direction that will aid in life as well as reading.

Rhyme is also a great memory aid and learning tool and learning new preschool songs, preschool rhymes, and preschool poems will help children improve their memory skills which can only help them when they begin their formal education.

Playing with and learning rhyme and songs also helps children improve their listening and sound discrimination skills. These will aid not only in learning to read but also becoming better students and better people in the future.

So if the simple fact that your child enjoys rhyme and song is not enough to encourage you making rhyme and song a part of your preschooler's life then you should also consider the other benefits such as setting the foundation for important reading skills, increasing vocabulary, improving memory, and teaching sound discrimination.

Find out more about Activity Preschool Songs and Lesson Plan Preschool Songs plus Learning To Read Book

15 Tips For Helping Children With Learning The Alphabet Letters

I volunteer four hours a week in my son's first grade classroom. I help out in a variety of ways but primarily I am involved in literacy activities. It is an exciting time in a child's literacy life as this is the year that emergent readers become full-fledged readers.

While they will continue to spend elementary school increasing their site words and vocabulary, there is a point during this year when most children can pick up a book at their reading level and read it from start to finish with their own knowledge and decoding skills. For some children, that point arrives early in the school year and others reach it at various points in the year.

However there are a handful of children in every first grade classroom who will not reach that point this year. These children still do not possess the basic literacy skills and techniques they need to become readers. They do not know their alphabet letters let alone the sounds that each letter represents in words. This lack of knowledge holds them back both in reading and in writing.

While the other children can write fluent sentences using their growing vocabularies as well as phonetic spelling based on their knowledge of the alphabetic principle, the children who do not yet know the alphabet fall further and further behind their peers every day.

As the parent of a preschooler, you have to ask yourself. Which group do you want your child to fall within? Unless you want your child to be behind in literacy by first grade then you must make sure your child has mastered the alphabet before starting kindergarten. Here are 15 tips to help you get started teaching your child their alphabet letters.

Tip 1 - Introduce the letter by finding a word or a name that is meaningful to your child. Example: B: ball

Tip 2 - Point to the letter on an Alphabet Chart (you can make one easily using the "Chunky Letters" coloring sheets) so your child can see where the letter is in the alphabet. The chart can be a learning tool to help your child visualize what the alphabet looks like.

Tip 3 - Sing the Alphabet Song and stop at that letter for the child to sing alone.

Tip 4 - Model the correct formation of the letter and have your child trace the letter in salt, sand, gel, fingerpaint, pudding, or shaving cream .

Tip 5 - Model the correct formation of the letter and have your child print the letter with a paintbrush, marker, crayon, chalk, q-tip, pencil, magic slate, or pen.

Tip 6 - Purchase magnetic letters to place on the refrigerator or cookie sheets to display the letter of the week.

Tip 7 - Point out the letter on signs and in books.

Tip 8 - Use playdough to roll out and make the letter or a toothpick to write the letter on the playdough.

Tip 9 - Talk about the shapes of the letters and if the upper and lower case are the same or different. Play matching games, same or different, or alphabet bingo.

Tip 10 - Take your finger and trace the letters on the palm of the hand or on your child's back.

Tip 11 - Practice using sticky notes and label objects in the house that begin with the letter.

Tip 12 - Alphabet Stamps are a practical investment for having fun with the alphabet for alphabet recognition, making words, and spelling.

Tip 13 - Eating the alphabet can be a delicious way to reinforce letters using vegetables, pretzels, potato sticks, and candy to form the letters.

Tip 14 - Decorate cupcakes, cakes or cookies using frosting tubes to print letters. Squeeze mustard, ketchup, mayonnaise, or jelly letters out of containers to enhance your food. If your not hungry place inside a ziploc bag and practice printing letters on the outside of the bag.

Tip 15 - Try Alphabits Cereal for breakfast and name the letters.

Learn more about other preschool lessons and learning the alphabet letters at http://teachyourpreschooler.com/

Teaching Reading - 3 Simple Ways To Teach Your Child To Read

We all know that learning to read is an important part of growing up for a child. Learning to read is also essential to future success both in school and in life. Older children and adults who struggle with reading will struggle in the future in terms of both professional prospects as well as personal life. Reading is quite simply a part of every day modern life. While we all know that helping our children learn to read is important, many parents struggle with what they can do as non-educators to teach children to read. There are three simple ways you can teach your child to read - expose them to the world of literacy, read to them, and give them the tools they need to become literate.

It is important to expose children to the world of literacy from a very young age. This means demonstrating on a daily basis how important reading is by sharing the various ways the written word is a part of daily modern life from street signs to food labels to printed literature. It is also important to teach young children how print works, such as the fact we read from left to right and top to bottom. Readers know this is the way literature works but non-readers need to be taught. You should also make sure your child has reading material available that is suitable and age appropriate. You can either provide your child with a library of their own or if money is tight then make sure they have a library card and visit regularly. Exposing your child to the world of literacy from a young age is an important part of teaching reading.

Reading to your child is the most important part of helping your child become a reader. Teaching reading involves teaching children to love reading. The more fun your child has with books from an early age then the more interested they will be when they reach school age in becoming a reader. Reading to your child also improves your child's emergent literacy skills including vocabulary, knowledge, and print awareness such as how a book works. Reading to your child on a regular basis gives your pre-reader a jumpstart in learning to read and continuing to read to your child even after they learn to read helps improve their vocabulary and reading skills.

Giving your child the tools they need to become literate is also important. Some parents handicap their children's efforts to learn to read by not helping them master the alphabet and beginning letter sounds before school begins. Other parents discourage learning to read by not providing age-appropriate reading material. If there are no books or magazines in the house to read then how can a child learn to read? Still other parents do not speak properly to their children, perhaps using baby talk, to encourage the development of vocabulary and grammar skills. You can be involved in helping your child learn to read by giving your child the tools they need to become literate.

If you follow these three simple steps you can teach your child to read. Teaching reading is as simple as exposing them to the world of literacy, reading to them, and giving them the tools they need to become literate.

You can find more information about learning to read books and how to teach reading programs at http://learningtoreadthroughrhyme.com/ and http://learningtoreadthroughrhyme.info/