Birth to
Kindergarten
Birth to Kindergarten
Ideas
Enrol your newborn baby in the local library. Make a weekly date for you and your children to go to the library and choose new books for the week. Make it an exciting, anticipated excursion!
Have fun with words in your home. Choose a different letter of the alphabet for each week. Use your letter for cooking, art and craft ideas, playing 'I Spy,' singing songs, playing games and learning new words.
Celebrate authors and illustrators in your home. Pick your child's favourite author or illustrator and learn about them together. Get out their books from your school and local library, photocopy favourite pictures and colour them in, find out about their life on the internet, make posters about them and even write to them!
Enjoy singing with your children by adding a little more excitement to your tune. Together create instruments using household items. These can include: pots and utensils from the kitchen, filling bottles and jars with rice or pasta, lining up glasses filled to different levels with water (each glass will produce a different pitch when tapped), you can be as creative as you like and use almost anything to make interesting noises. Play your instruments to known songs, nursery rhymes and make up silly songs yourself!
Play 'Hide and Seek' with books. Choose a few books to hide inside and outside the home. Have your child go hunting, and after they are all found, snuggle up in the lounge room and read them together.
Make homework time an anticipated event for your children. Create a colourful and enticing place in your home where your children enjoy working. Decorate it with posters and occasionally allow a variety of music to create a good working atmosphere.
Encourage your children to enjoy language, reading and learning. Be on the look out for opportunities to praise and reward them for the smallest of accomplishments. Have stickers, and small treats available. You can also design a reward chart where 10 or so points is rewarded with a treat from the supermarket or bookshop. Your words of praise and treats will boost their confidence and cause them to take pride in their work.
Turn your television off at mealtimes this week and spend time talking to one another around the dinner table. Share the best and worst thing of the day with each other and build intimacy into your family. Interview each other about favourite things, goals and tell funny jokes.
Take your children outside with their homework or a few books to read and enjoy the outdoors and learning together. Spread out with pillows on a picnic blanket, prepare snacks together beforehand and soak up the fresh air and change of environment.
Take every opportunity you can to explore words and reading with your children. Read cereal boxes, TV guides, junk mail, anything that has words in your homes! Make a challenge to find something new and unusual to read each week.
Write letters to your family members and leave them in surprise places. Your family will love receiving special letters from you, enjoy reading them and be inspired to write letters back to you! You can even make mail boxes and place them outside your rooms to receive mail.
Look for different ways to enjoy reading in your home. Spend time reading to each child, reading together as a family, and make sure you spend some time reading yourself!
Start a children's book club. Invite the neighbourhood kids and friends over, choose a great book, and share a chapter together each day. You can discuss the book together, dress up as the character and have a book party when the book is completed.
Create a magical corner of the house especially for reading. Put cushions, posters, blankets, books and special treats in the corner. Make it bright, colourful and enticing for your children.
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