L.A.
You do not need to buy a reading program.
The secret to language and reading is to talk all of the time and to read as much as possible to your child.
I remind parents that sometimes you will feel like you are in some sort of "voice over" when you are with an infant or toddler.
You keep an ongoing conversation with your infant when they are awake. "Good morning sweetie! Did you sleep good? I like your bright eyes. OOo, your diaper is wet. I am going to lay you down on the changing table, please hold the diaper, thank you. What dreams did you have last night?"
Today I am going to vacuum the living room, give you a bath and yummy, squash for lunch! Dad is going to work, so we are going to surprise him with lunch!
Some parents do not do this because they do not think their children understand them.. Instead they keep the radio on or the TV going, but they forget that even infants will pick up the parents voice cues, from the tone of the human voice.
In the car, if your infant, toddler is awake, you can ask them questions, Tell them what the grocery list is, sing them a song..Point out what is going on outside of their window. If you are too tired, turn on a childrens book on CD.
At the store, your child will be fascinated, with your on going dialog about what you and your child are looking at. Our local Grocery store is H.E.B.
I think those are the 3 Letters our children learn the quickest, because we do not say "we are going to the store" we say "we are going. to HEB to pick up bread, Milk... The signs are everywhere in every neighborhood. On TV, on ads in the paper and mailers sent to our homes. The youngest children can show you the letters and the comprehend those shapes mean something,.
. Read to them even at the youngest age. And do not underestimate their comprehension and interest.
Board books, and picture books are fine, but as soon as our daughter showed interest in the story part at 6 to 8 months, we were reading golden books to her. Yes, we still used the baby book with the picture of the ball, but even better, we could hand her a ball and say Ball.
When she was a toddler, I would give her a piece of paper and a crayon, and together we would make our errand list or grocery list.
I would ask, what are we going to buy at the HEB. And she would start "writing" her list while I wrote mine. As she got older and started to understand the H was what ham started with she would scratch out ham. mostly the H.
Eggs,, she could make her version of Eggs
B.. Bread
HEB
Together we labeled everything in her room. Bed. Mirror, Window this is one of those projects we worked on when it was raining outside or it was too darn hot to be outside. Plus, she loved scotch Tape, so this was a bonus!
When she had just turned 4 we had started short chapter books. She loved the "long stories" Many nights we would read aloud for over an hour. We realized this was one of her favorite times of the day. So we made sure that naptime included a long story time and bedtime included a really long story time also,.
We not only always read the Title of the book, but also the Author and the Illustrator.. EVERY time. We could hold up a book and she could tell you the title, Author and Illustrator. You should have seen her at the book stores! She could call out the titles, the Authors and the Illustrators. Even the salespeople could ask her a childrens book title and she could tell them. Some of her favorite Books were by Robert Muncsh and Illustrated by Michael Matchenko. When we would attend story time they always read the Author, but our daughter would raise her had and want to also know the Illustrators name.
Just as our daughter turned 4, I had heard about B.O.B. books. They are these little books with stick figures, and were "Easy readers" I thought I would try to teach our daughter to read. Purchased the first set. On the way home, our daughter read the entire set aloud, I turned the car around and exchanged them for the second set. She already knew how to read!
Just through the everyday conversations.. the understanding the These shapes stood for sounds, she had picked up on how to put it all together. on her own.
The best part of all of this? WE were reading together,. Our daughter enjoyed reading, but she loved that we did it together, Teaching an 12 month old to read, is fine, but why? Nothing wrong with it, but it is like teaching a 10 year old to drive a car, yes, it can be done, but for what reason? Children want us to spend time with them. Reading is a great way for parents and children to learn and explore together. It is also such a small amount of time in a childs life, being with them is 90% of the fun of reading with a child. Once we discovered our child could read, we turned the tables, She would then read to us. I would give her an option at naptime, I could read to her or she could read to me. I loved when she read to me, because I would get to nap and then she naturally would lay next to me and take her nap! Sometimes she would just read read aloud to herself for the entire hour and a half!