What Parents Need to Know About Daycare and Early Literacy
How can daycare help your young child to build early literacy skills? Language and literacy development starts in the first few years. If your child is ready to start pre-school, take a look at what you need to know about childcare services, early literacy, and your young student's development.
Why Are Early Literacy Skills Important?
Your child is years away from reading on their own. But this shouldn't stop you from helping them to develop early literacy skills. Even though toddlers and young preschoolers aren't developmentally ready to sound out every word they see, read sentences, or page through chapter books, they can start to build a foundation for basic literacy skills right now.
The skills your child develops during the child care or pre-k years can help them as they transition into kindergarten—and beyond. This may give your child the jump start they need to ease into elementary school. It may also inspire a lifelong love of reading that they can take with them into the teen years and adulthood.
How Will Pre-Kindergarten Help Early Literacy Development?
There isn't just one agreed-upon universal way young children build early literacy skills. Instead, your preschooler may start to develop language, reading, and communication abilities at home, at school, through extra-curricular activities, or in other places. Even though you may read to your child daily or bring them to the local library's story-time sessions, they can also benefit from literacy lessons during daycare.
Your child's teacher is a professional early childhood educator who has the knowledge and experience necessary to create lessons, instruct preschoolers, and support developmental literacy- and language-related practices. This means your child will have the chance to engage in early literacy-based activities while in care.
What Types of Literacy Activities Do Childcare Services Provide?
The answer to this question depends on the program, its curriculum, your child's age, and the teacher. While worksheets and flashcards were once popular ways to encourage literacy skill development, it's more likely your child will learn through hands-on activities. These could include letter-based art projects, class discussions, reading stories interactively, dramatic play, or cross-curricular lessons that bridge literacy and science, social studies, music, or any other classroom content area.
To learn more about how your child's daycare teacher uses early literacy activities in the classroom and encourages language, reading, writing, and communication skill-building, ask for more information. The teacher may have a classroom calendar or lesson plans to share. If not, the early childhood educator can discuss the activities and help you find ways to encourage literacy development at home.
To learn more about childhood literacy in relation to daycare services, look to companies such as Learning Tree Schools.