How can you help your child develop early literacy skills?

• Read regularly to your child - this is the best way to help them understand patterns of language while extending their vocabulary.
• Look at books and discuss the pictures as this helps to develop oral comprehension.
• Encourage children to listen to the sounds in words and to enjoy rhyme which helps to develop phonological awareness.
• Offer lots of opportunities to explore and play with letters, using alphabet friezes, magnetic letters and alphabet books. Your child will gradually become aware of the letters that are important to them, perhaps letters from their first name or a letter that matches a name of a family member.
• As your child develops confidence with favourite stories and texts, see if your child can guess what is going to happen next, which begins to develop prediction skills.
• Offer a wide range of mark making opportunities at home. Have fun with giant paint brushes and water and chubbie chalks on the patio or experiment with a whiteboard and pen as the resistance is much less than using paper and crayons and offers immediate mark making success! It is important that your child has lots of opportunities to mark make on a large scale as young children’s larger movements from the shoulder to the hand need to become more refined before moving on to smaller and more intricate finger movements which are required for holding a pencil.
• Encourage your child to retell familiar stories in their own words
• Your child might enjoy making up imaginative stories and telling them to you.
• Be a good role model to show your child the importance of writing, e.g. shopping lists, writing notes, thank you notes and greetings cards.
• If your child can say it then they will eventually be able to write it. Help your child by modelling appropriate language and gently rephrasing any errors they may make (e.g. “I taked a pink cake” can be rephrased as “That’s right, you took a pink cake”).