November 7, 2011
As the weather gets cooler, and we are spending more time inside...reading books together is a wonderful way to improve and enhance language skills with your preschool student!
Some things that children learn and practice through reading books with their parents include:
1. Isolating pointing skills with a finger as they touch pictures in the book.
2. Social time with parents!!
3. Increasing attention span to a single activity.
4. Learning labels for pictures to increase receptive vocabulary.
5. Learning about and gaining experience with things that they can not experience in "real life".
6. Cognitive skill development as concepts are labeled (such as "big, long tail", or "she has the most")
7. Increasing listening skills
8. Imitation of words or actions in the story.
9. Labeling pictures and actions and beginning to retell stories orally
10. Anticipating parts of stories, making predictions.
All of these language and cognitive concepts are crucial to language development, and for later reading and writing!
So cuddle up with a good book and READ, READ, READ!!
Andrea M. Aubry, Speech-Language Pathologist
