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Ready for Reading

BIRTH TO 5

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Play

Play is how children learn, and how they come to understand their world. Play can happen in many ways. Play games, play with words, and play with music and rhymes. Play make believe, invent new worlds, and create your own stories

Bring a sense of adventure and fun to your reading by reading with humour, expression and enthusiasm. Place a few books with cutouts, lift-the-flaps, pop-ups or touch-and-feel elements with your baby’s toys so they begin to interact with books and start to see books as fun and exciting. Let them touch, feel and explore these books.

Reading in different places also adds to the excitement of reading. Try reading in different places around your house or city.

Activities

Discover Play Activities

Playing Tips

  • Sing throughout the day and make up your own silly songs to introduce new vocabulary. New words can be easier to learn when they rhyme or are put to music. Many activities can be sung to the tune of “Here We Go ‘Round the Mulberry Bush”.
  • Help your child roll clay, play dough or plasticine into thin “logs.” Ask your child to use the logs to form the letters he is learning.
  • Choose a “Letter of the Day” and point out everything you see, all day long, that starts with that letter. Find and name letters in books, on signs and labels, on toys, food boxes and other objects all around.
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