Here at Whitecross we love to read and share our love of books with our children and their families.  We always have many good quality books around the environment for children to look at and use in their play and staff read to all children every day.

All children have the opportunity to browse in our extensive library and take a new book home weekly in a book bag to enjoy and share with their family at home. In our meetings with families we share early reading skills and support parents and carers with help and ideas.  We have good links with local libraries and take the children into town to visit as well as inviting the library service into school.

We share our book of the week with all families on ClassDojo, our learning story and on our notice board for family members to look at when dropping off or collecting. .

Please look on The BookTrust website for more information about reading with young children.

Tips for reading with your child | BookTrust

BookTrust: Reading with your child aged 3-4 years

Simple steps to a better sleep | BookTrust

Tips for families when sharing stories with young children

• Enjoy a cuddle or snuggle when you share a story, children will learn to associate story time as happy, safe and fun.
• Tell your child who and what the author and illustrator are and do.  They will start to recognise the style of writing and pictures of their favourite stories.
• Model turning pages left to right.
• Talk about what you see in the pictures as well as reading the words.
• Resist asking lots of questions, it is more important to enjoy the story together as reading should be fun and not too structured.
• Encourage children to join in with repeated phases or refrains, it is lots of fun!

As children develop their love of books and understanding of stories then asking some questions will help to develop their understanding further and focus their learning.

Examples of questions to ask when sharing books

Start with simpler questions e.g.

• Can you point to the cat?
• Where is the blue dinosaur? 
• Shall we count the pigs?  First count together modelling the skill, then encourage children to start to count independently?

Build up slowly to more difficult questions requiring inference and prediction skills e.g.

• What is the weather doing in the story?
• Why is the frog sad?
• How is the boy feeling?
• What might happen next?

Most importantly, make time and have fun!

"If you read just one book per day to a child from birth, they will have enjoyed over a thousand books by the time they are three!"

September 2018

"The more you read, the more you know.  The more you learn, the more places you’ll go.”

From Dr Seuss, I can read with my eyes shut.