Our ten-month-old likes books.
He smiles at many of the pictures as we’re reading, reviews a book by looking through it again once I’ve read it, and points at things that catch his interest. He is developing his page-turning skills, though sometimes he’s a bit over-eager with this task. He already shows a preference for certain books, and he sometimes “reads” on his own.
It’s fun to pass along this love of reading, and it’s more my responsibility that I may have realized. Today I came across a summary of some research out of Harvard that found the following four factors encourage childhood reading:
- a home literacy environment (lots of print material, positive attitudes toward reading, etc.)
- mother’s educational expectations of the child
- mother’s own education
- parent-child interaction
Would that every child had the proper balance of these four elements to give them a solid educational foundation.
I do think that parents make a huge difference in a child’s literacy. I am hoping that I can help the Imagination Library get started here in Todd County.