Books
Studies show that kids with active exposure to language have social and educational advantages over their peers — and reading is one of the best exposures to language. Reading to toddlers sets the foundation for later independent reading. But before they can read independently, they need emergent literacy skills.These include:
- having a large vocabulary of words and knowing how to use them
- understanding that words are made up of smaller sounds (called phonemic awareness)
- understanding that marks on a page represent letters and words
- knowing the letters of the alphabet