By the time your baby has his first birthday, his newborn days seem a distant memory. The tiny bundle of joy that you brought home is now moving around the house under his own power. If he isn’t walking, he is crawling like a commando. He has definite likes and dislikes and will let you know with howls and smiles. He is probably talking, or at least knows a few words.
Your little one is noticing how you communicate and will often copy both your sounds and your tones, so watch what you say! You can capitalize on your child’s growing language skills to help prepare her for reading. Before you get started with activities, let’s take a look inside your child’s growing brain. What’s Happening
You can see your child growing on the outside, but it doesn’t compare to what is going on inside your child’s brain. During the first year, her brain was growing physically and making new connections called synapses.
By the time she is one, the physical growth has slowed a little bit, but she is really going to town making new synapses. According to the Urban Child Institute, the connections in your baby’s brain will more than double between her first and second birthday and most of these new connections are in your child’s growing language center of her brain.
Your child’s brain is now complex enough to begin to make logical connections and even a few predictions. For example, she might realize that when you are wearing a bathing suit, she is going to have fun in the pool. Communicating those new ideas becomes a major goal for your toddler. By helping explore communication, you are setting your child on the road to reading. Before you can move ahead, make sure your child is ready. That way, you and your child will enjoy the games and activities that help her develop the skills for reading.
Milestones
To prepare for reading, your child will need to meet specific goals. Let’s look at what your child should be able to do by her first birthday. She should be able to:
- Use simple exclamations such as “uh-oh,” when she drops something, or “mmm” when she sees a treat.
- Respond to simple commands such as “come here.”
- Use simple gestures such as shaking or nodding the head or waving “bye-bye.”
- Plays simple mirror games such as “patty-cake.”
- Picks things up with her fore-finger and thumb.
- Explores things independently by feeling, shaking or dropping new objects.
- Uses one or two words, such as “Dada,” or “Mama.”
- Babbles long strings of words.
- Uses tone to convey emotion.
- Looks or points at the correct picture when an object is named.
- Finds hidden things easily.
- Crawls or scoots.
- “Cruises,” or walks holding on to furniture.
When to Worry
If your baby doesn’t do everything on the list, don’t sweat it. But if she can do nothing on the list by her first birthday, there may be cause for concern. If your child has not mastered the following list by her first birthday, please have a discussion with your pediatrician.
- Sits unassisted
- Crawls or scoots
- Stands with support
- Searches for hidden items
- Turns when her name is called
- Startles to loud noises
- Makes no sound
- Gestures to be understood
Early intervention is the key to keeping your child on track.
Reading Readiness
While your child isn’t ready to read, you can help him get ready by helping him realize that shapes and symbols have meaning. This understanding will help him make the leap from symbols on the page to ideas in his head. Begin with recognizing shapes: circles, squares, diamonds and the like. There are many board books that simply explore shapes. They can be good to introduce the concept to your child. But after you have explored shapes in a book, start pointing them out around the house. For example. You can look at a square in the book, then point out that the slice of cheese you give your toddler for lunch is also a square. The tire on the car is a circle. The book is a rectangle.
As your child becomes better at recognizing shapes, move on to symbols such as signs, logos, and pictures. Point out stop signs, and act out it’s instruction. Stop and look at signs for school and park. Finally, look at signage in your neighborhood. Companies spend millions of dollars designing logos that exemplify their business. So why not use them as a free education for your child. Many children quickly learn that those golden arches protect happy meal toys. Finally look at pictures. You can help your child explain concepts with simple pictures of items and people in his life. For example, clip art of an apple or banana not only shows you what your child would like to eat, but shows him that a picture can represent a real thing.
All of this is leading up to helping your child earn to recognize letters. This is the single most important part of getting your child ready to read. At this point, don’t worry about what sounds the letters make, just concentrate on ensuring that your child learns the names of each letter. A great place to start is with alphabet puzzles and big, block foam letters. Before your child can say the name of each letter, familiarize your child with each letter by playing with the shapes as toys. While your child is learning to recognize these shapes and lines, it is also important to get her ready to write. Reading and writing are both related skills. Your toddler doesn’t have the fine motor skills to hold a pencil, even a fat one, but she can begin to explore and practice making many of the large shapes she will need later for writing.
As you go through these activities, remember that children learn best through play. Keep the tone light and fun. Don’t force your child to participate, instead, entice her by showing deep interest in the activity yourself. She will want to see what you are doing. Don’t worry about what your child’s mistakes, she will make plenty of them. Laugh them off as if she has made a joke. Never tell a child she is wrong. Instead, treat this as play and encourage her to try again. While the activities are split at the 18-month date, there are no hard and fast rules for these activities. If your child shows more interest in letters before 18 months, go ahead and add the “older” activities. If your child is 20 months and still shows no interest in letters, don’t sweat it. It doesn’t mean there’s anything wrong with your child. The most important thing is that you spend time with your child and you both have a good time.
Activities for 12 to 18 months
Shape Scrape
Let your child play with shapes in the sandbox. Simply scrape circles, triangles and squares into the sand and talk about them with your child. Say something like: “How do we make a circle? We go around and around.” Or “what does a square have? It has four sides.” Take your child’s hand in your own and “help” her make the shapes. Slightly wet sand works best.
Shape Hunter
As you go about your day, talk to your child about the different shapes you encounter. Show him how a slice of banana is an oval (or circle, depending on how you cut it.) Cut a sandwich into triangles and talk about the three sides. Count the sides of a saltine cracker and talk about the square.
Bath Buddies
Turn bath time into learning time with chunky foam shapes. If you can’t find good foam letters at your local toy shop, try cutting a fresh sponge into shapes with regular household scissors. Start with the basics: circle, triangle, rectangle and square. Ask your child to point to each of these shapes. When he can point to the correct shape most of the time, start adding new shapes such as diamonds, ovals, and hearts. Ask your child to find each shape and celebrate when he does.
Shapes and Signs
Point out signs around the neighborhood when you are walking or driving. Start by counting the sides: four sides for road and street signs, three for yellow yield signs and eight for stop signs. As you bring the signs to your child’s attention, start telling her what the signs mean. You can say something like; “See the red STOP sign? That means we have to stop.” Or “See the children walking? That means we are near a school.” As your child becomes more familiar with the signs you see on a regular basis, ask her to point to specific signs you see regularly.
Finger Painting
Finger painting is iffy for this age group. Before the age of two, it is common for children to try to eat the paint. Even if its labeled non-toxic, it can still be kind of gross. Instead, try letting your child “paint” with other, more palatable things. For example, try mixing a tablespoon of meringue powder with two tablespoons of water and a few drops of food coloring. This makes a completely edible paint that has no taste. (So, you won’t teach your child to eat paint!) Use the paint on finger painting paper that has a slightly waxed surface. Show your child how to make lines, squiggles, circles and zig zags. The goal for you as a parent is to help your child gain control over large hand movements. The edible paint will dry to a light pastel shade for your child’s finger-painting masterpiece.
Just Desserts
Use food to help your little one work on those developing fine motor skills. Simply add a little food coloring to non-dairy topping and spread the colorful mixture on a cookie sheet. Make lines, squiggles and circles in the cream, letting the cookie sheet shine through. “Erase” your work by spread the cream out evenly over the cookie sheet. When you are done, hand out spoons and eat your dessert.
Reading for 12 to 18 months
There are dozens of fun shapes books that you can get anywhere. Simple books that have brightly colored cartoon shapes, such as Shapes! or Colors and Shapes. You can even make your own by taking pictures of things around the house and tracing the shape in a bright colored marker. Then place the photos in a small album. But as your child becomes more adept at spotting shapes, move on to books that present shapes in different venues such as Paris: A Book of Shapes. This helps your child spot shapes within different visual fields. Finally, move to shape books that have the beginning of a story such as Shape by Shape.
This is really a golden age to begin reading stories to your child. They are still happy to be in your lap, but they understand what you say so much more. You can begin to share stories that have simple plots. Begin to ask simple yes or no questions that make predictions about the story. For example, if you are reading Goodnight Moon, you might ask: “Do you think the little bunny is going to sleep?”
Make sure that your little one has access to books. Designate a short bookshelf just for your child’s books and toys, or clear out the bottom shelves of a tall bookshelf. If using a tall bookshelf, make sure that the furniture is firmly anchored to the wall so that your child is safe. Place sturdy books on the shelf so that your child can look through them whenever he wishes. If your child is careful, you may want to start looking at books with paper pages when the child is in your lap, but place them out of reach when you are done. Children this young rarely have the motor control to turn pages without ripping paper.
Look for books that have simple storylines such Goodnight Moon, Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See, and Moo, Baa, La La La all have repetition and surprises that will keep children of this age guessing until the end. Many children at this age love to hear books again and again. To an adult, it seems obvious that the book will not change, regardless of how many times you read it. But to a child, this is still a mystery. They are perfectly happy hearing the same book over and over because they are learning that the story will remain static.
Activities for 18 to 24 months
As your child starts to master, or even become bored with exploring shapes, it’s time to start introducing letters. In the beginning, concentrate on the uppercase letters. Introduce the lowercase letters after your child has mastered the uppercase ones. When you introduce the lowercase letters, start with the lowercase that are simply smaller versions of the uppercase such as “c,” “v,” and “w.”
After your child is comfortable with these letters, move on to the other lowercase letters. In the beginning start with just a few letters at a time. Change and add letters until your child can recognize the entire alphabet. Some children will march through the entire alphabet quickly, while other will take a little more time. Don’t rush your toddler. Keep it light and keep it fun. Your child will learn.
A is for Awesome and B is for Bath
Look for chunky foam letters online or at your local store. If you can’t find them, cut uppercase letters out of new, unused sponges with a pair of household scissors. When you give your child a bath, begin by placing three or four letters in the tub with your child. Hold up each letter and say the name as you use it. You might say something like: “The ‘A’ is on your tummy!” or “The ‘B’ is bouncing on your knee!” If your child reaches for the letter, let him. You want him to explore each letter, look through the holes in the center and try them on as hats. It may not seem like this is working towards reading, but your delight in these antics helps your child feel comfortable with letters, and ultimately the written word.
Stamp Mania
Make finger paint and dip a foam letter into the paint. Stamp the letter onto finger painting paper. Hold the child’s hand in yours and trace the letter you have stamped in the paint. Say the name of the letter while you trace it. After you have traced three or four letters on the paper, ask your child to point to one of the letters. If your child chooses the wrong letter, help him trace the correct letter.
Magnetic Reading
Place a set of alphabet magnets on the refrigerator and turn cooking time into learning time. Like the bath activity, start with just three or four letters on the refrigerator door where your child can reach them. While you are prepping food, or washing dishes, ask your little one to get you specific letters from the door. In the beginning, your child will get plenty of letters wrong. When she brings you the wrong letter, treat it as though she is playing a joke. You might say something like: “Silly, that isn’t an ‘A!’
The letter ‘A’ has a triangle at the top.” Since your child has become familiar with shapes, this will help her choose the right one. Make sure that you have a fun celebration in mind when she brings the correct letter. You can put the words “You found the letter!” to whatever tune you, and your child, like best.
I Spy, Alphabet Edition
This is a great activity for waiting rooms, bus stops and other times when you might want to keep a toddler’s attention. Just look at the largest letters around you. Then say: “I spy with my little eye—the letter ‘A.’” Then encourage the child to find the same letter and point to it. It’s easiest to start playing this game with a magazine or newspaper, so that the child can see how to play, then graduate to signs, or other public lettering.
Sidewalk Artist
Write uppercase letters on the sidewalk or driveway with chalk. Start with only three or four letters that your child knows well. Then ask him to run to the letter that you call out. As your child becomes more familiar with letters, swap the letters out. For toddlers, don’t write more than seven or eight letters at a time. They can be distracted by too many choices.
Familiar Fun and Games
Don’t forget the games that you have played before with your child. Look for letters in signs as you take a walk, just as you once searched for shapes. Trace letters in the sand or cream for a fun way to explore letters. Just be sure to make them nice and big. Toddlers are not known for their fine motor skills.
Book Lover
As your child becomes more proficient with the alphabet, turn to books. Give your child a sturdy alphabet book with large, colorful letters. Go through the book and then ask your child: “Where is the ‘M?’” The first couple of times, flip through the pages with your child to find the correct letter. When he gets the hang of the game, ask him to flip the pages himself. Try to keep the letters together. For example, if you asked him to find the letter “G” you may want to ask for the letter “I” rather than the letter “R.”
Reading for 18 to 24 months
In addition to the simple picture books, add books that support your child’s growing confidence in letters. Choose books that feature letters. There are a wide range of alphabet books on the market, but you don’t have to stop there. Many alphabet books have wildly creative ways to explore letters. Looking back, Dr. Seuss has a lovely book that explores the letters in his signature verse.
Then there is the ever-popular Chick Chicka Boom Boom where the letters behave like mischievous children. There are also alphabet books that look at specific interests such as Eating the Alphabet, that features fruits and vegetables in alphabetical order. For that truck enthusiast, check out The Construction Alphabet Book that look at the alphabet with big machines. In addition, many states and regions have alphabet books that share unique features your child might see everyday.
Even though you are working on naming the letters in the alphabet, don’t neglect your child’s favorite books, and don’t leave time and energy for new books that will become favorites. Books that are interactive, such as Rodeo Ron and His Milkshake Cows. It is almost impossible to read that book without bouncing a young listener on your knee.