Santo Domingo Pueblo

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