Talking with children is important because it builds your child’s language and communication skills. By creating opportunities for your child to re-tell stories you can support your child’s understanding of how stories work. This is a great way to support early literacy skills and will help with reading comprehension and their development of simple sentence construction.
When you go on an outing or holiday with your child take a few photos of things happening around you. For example, during a trip to the farm, take photos as your child feeds the animals, goes on a ride, or eats lunch. Later, look at the photos together and use them to help guide your child to recount what happened at the farm. By placing the pictures in a sequence, it opens an opportunity for you to support your child’s understanding of sequence and related vocabulary such as ‘first’, ‘next’, and ‘last’. Get your child to conclude with an “closing statement” such as “when we go back, we looked at the pictures and…” or “I really liked going to the farm because….”
Encourage your child to include who is the picture, what they are doing and where they are.
You could create your own personalised book as a fun and personal way to enhance your child’s language skills.
References
Reading and Writing Nonfiction Genres. Buss, Kathleen; Karnowski, Lee Writing frames: Scaffolding children’s nonfiction writing in a range of genres. Lewis Maureen, Wray David http://www.skrivesenteret.no/uploads/files/Lewis_and_Wray.pdf
