Today is Family Literacy Day and you may be surprised what 20 minutes worth of reading with your kids can do.
Grey County Early Years Literacy Facilitator Jill McFadden-Bartley says putting in 20 minutes every day from infancy to the end of grade six will add up to over 14-hundred hours.
McFadden-Bartley says that is a huge contribution when is comes to the success of a child.
She also encourages parents to involve the kids in story time, such as asking them what they think will happen next in the book.
McFadden-Bartley says it’s important to do that because the term literacy doesn’t just apply to reading books.
Instead, it also includes critical thinking, patterning, and numeracy – and it’s those skills that will help a child problem solve, communicate, and really understand what they’ve taken in.
McFadden-Bartley says besides reading with them, there are lots of other everyday activities parents can use to help develop literacy in their kids.
She suggests getting the kids to write out the grocery list, put events on the calendar, and just talk about things they see in the world around them.
