
Parent/child Literacy Program
Ideas to encourage children to develop a life-long love of reading:
- Talk through processes you do: doing laundry, fixing a car, cooking, pulling weeds, driving a car, paying a bill, giving a bath, getting a child dressed
- Tell stories
- Spend 15 minutes every day reading – anything!
- Read aloud: a recipe, a grocery bill, a food label, signs, mail, magazines, newspapers, posters, phone messages
- Read together and talk with your child: guess what will happen on the next page, have the child talk about the pictures
- Read a wordless book together and make up a story that fits the picture sequence
- Reread favorite stories and books
- Sing songs and rhymes (e.g., Peek-a-Boo, This Little Piggy), clap to the rhythm
- Use the close-captioned feature of videos, TV, YouTube
- Introduce new words and explain what they mean.
- Expand on a child’s language: “Milk.” “You would like a glass of milk?” Child nods. “Yes, you can have some milk. Milk is healthy. It is good for your teeth.”
- Label things in the house (e.g., stove, desk, chair, window, door, clock, floor, rug, bed, toilet, mirror)
- Cut out or draw pictures and caption them
- Provide writing material: crayons, pencils, paper (even backs of mailed paper); have children do “pretend” writing
- Make an ABC book from cut out pictures – or draw the pictures; that becomes the child’s book
- Create a child’s home library (it can be a cardboard box)
- Buy a book or give a magazine subscription to a child
- Make every trip a reading trip: read signs, read maps, read labels in stores, read menus, introduce vocabulary words (e.g., groceries, aisle, shelf, freezer, scale, produce, dairy, check-out stand, cashier)
Visit your local Library
Santo Domingo Public Library at the Community Center
1 Tesuque St
Kewa Pueblo, NM 87052
