For Parents and Guardians...

Build Reading Skills at Home

• Take your child to the public library. Help your child get a library card. Find out if there are any special programs or reading clubs at your library. Ask the children's librarian to recommend a good book for your child.
   
• Do follow-up reading after watching a television show. For example, after watching a show about whales, get library books on that topic.
   
• Give your child books as gifts.
   
• Encourage your child to give books as gifts.
   
• Take books along when you go to doctors' offices, on car trips, and on vacations.
   
• Show your child that you like to read.
   
• Read aloud to your child.  Children enjoy hearing the same stories many times.
   
• Provide a special shelf or box for your child to store books.
   
• After reading a story to your child, discuss the story. Ask your child to make up another good title for it. Ask your child to tell you what happened at the beginning, middle, and end of the story.
   
• Encourage your child to make books. These books can be storybooks or scrapbooks with pictures such as animals.
   
• Suggest that your child create bookmarks using pictures cut from greeting cards and magazines mounted on cardboard and decorated with yarn or scraps of cloth.
   
• Set aside a special time to read every day.

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