All parents would love to have endless amounts of time to sit and read to their kids, right? Unfortunately, life gets in the way and can make time for frequent one-on-one reading with your little ones hard to find. Fear not, frazzled parents! We’ve got a couple tricks up our sleeves at the library that…
I’ve been reading a book recently called Thirty Million Words: Building a Child’s Brain by Dana Suskind, MD. It focuses on three key ways in which parents can interact with their children to help their child’s brain development: tune in, talk more, and take turns (the “Three Ts”). The book goes into great detail about…
Want to start your child on the path to reading success? Washington-Centerville Public Library has a new program that will help you do just that! 1,000 Books Before Kindergarten is a fun way to challenge you and your child to make a commitment to reading. Stop by our Library to pick up a reading journal…
Print awareness is a broad term that includes the understanding that print has meaning, the knowledge of how to handle a book, and the idea that print is all around us. Print awareness is a really important pre-reading skill and is one that you can work on without too much effort as you read with…
With summer already underway, you may have started trying to figure out how you’re going to keep your kids interested in reading this summer. Here are some tips to encourage a summer full of reading: 1. Keep books everywhere—in the playroom, in the bedroom, in the car. The more accessible books are, the more they’ll get read….
The “summer slide” refers to what can happen to kids’ brains when they are idle during the summer months. Experts from the National Summer Learning Association estimate that the equivalent of about two month’s instruction time can be lost if children don’t keep their brains active during that break from school. Reading is a great…
Some of you might be wondering what in the world I could be talking about—Spring Break Blues?! I mean, who doesn’t LOVE Spring Break?! Well, if you’ve ever taken little ones out of town, you’ve probably experienced at least a little bit of the madness that can occur during a long ride in a car…
As a parent, you are your children’s first and often most influential role model. Your kids are constantly watching you and learning from your behavior (whether you like it or not!). Though you’re probably very conscious of making sure to properly model good manners and choosing right from wrong, things like modeling good reading habits might…
Babies are very cute, but they sure are needy! If you have a newborn at home, there’s a pretty high likelihood that your “me-time” has substantially diminished or even become non-existent. It’s your responsibility to make sure that your baby is fed, bathed, happy, diapered, well rested, stimulated, and kept alive. That doesn’t leave time…
As children write, they become aware that the written letters and words have meaning, and they start to see the relationship between written and spoken word. Because of this, writing is one of the five early literacy practices that help children become ready to read. The holidays present a number of great opportunities to practice…
