My daughter turned three a few months ago, and she’s at a funny in-between stage with letters and reading. We read aloud every day, of course; I love snuggling with her, and get excited when she learns new words.
Since she’s no longer a baby, our read-aloud time is different now as she develops pre-literacy skills. We spend a lot of time joking and talking about the stories and illustrations in her books. But even though she engages with text more than she did as a baby, she’s not yet sounding out words.
Until I had a three-year-old in the house, I didn’t think a lot about this in-between stage. We don’t talk about it as much as we do introducing books to babies, or teaching school-age children how to read. But I am finding that my toddler does all sorts of interesting, unexpected things, and she's learning a lot right now.
Below are five interesting things that happened recently, and which give me a little glimpse into her young mind:
- H starts with house: My daughter knows generally that when we talk about spelling we use the phrase “starts with,” but she doesn’t fully grasp its meaning. So instead of saying “house starts with h,” she reverses it. As adults we often use idiomatic phrases whose meaning is implicit, and a lot of it has to be explained.
- Left to right: Speaking of which, I was surprised to discover that she doesn’t just somehow know we read left to right. So while she now loves to spell out the words in her books, I often have to remind her that it's p-u-p-p-y not y-p-p-u-p. (Side note: getting through a book takes a lot longer now!)
- Uppercase/Lowercase: Although she has been able to identify her letters since she was about eighteen months old, she's only got uppercase letters down. With lowercase letters, she often flips them upside down (for example, she says an m is a w, or a d is a p).
Baby books: She will remind me at every turn that she is a big girl, but she still loves her baby books. I didn’t think that at three years old we would still be reading Dance, Dance, Baby!, but it remains in heavy rotation. Except now we talk a lot when we read, chatting about what's happening in the illustrations, and discussing what she did as a baby.- Steel-trap Toddler Memory: I’d always heard parents say that kids memorize favorite books, but I didn’t really understand how astonishing this is until I saw it in action. While I turn the pages, my daughter can recite the entire book to me, not missing a word. And although I’m the one reading the book aloud every night, I absolutely cannot do the same.
If you have a toddler in your life and are interested in how you can help them develop preliteracy skills, check out this article on our parent site. If you’re interested in some booklists, click here. (Lately, my daughter is wearing out her copy of I am SuperKid!.)
