Choosing The Perfect Degree

You can see the benefits that daycare has for your child. Your little learner is starting to get more social, understanding the world around her and she's showing a new love — for books. Building early literacy skills right now can set your young child on a path to becoming a life-long reader. And her child care teacher is helping her to do this. But her teacher isn't the only one who can help her to learn about reading and writing. You also play a part in early literacy development too.

What can you do at home to help your child build reading and writing skills? Take a look at these easy-to-do activities.

Reading Everywhere

There are words everywhere you go. When you're at home there are letters on your child's cereal box, her toys and even her clothes. When you're out, you can find letters on street signs, billboards, buildings and almost everywhere else. Use this to your advantage and ask your child to pick out letters.

For example, when you're eating breakfast, ask your child to find the letter "A" on the cereal box or have her 'spy' the letter "S" on a street sign during a walk around the neighborhood. This activity helps your child to recognize letters and identify them.

Art Activities

The fine motor movements that your child needs to make in order to write can start with scribbling. They can also begin while trying out a few simple art activities. Art-making helps your child to develop eye-hand coordination and dexterity while practicing her grip.

Give your child crayons, colorful chalk or markers and papers to draw with. It's okay if she wants to scribble, and doesn't attempt to make "something." As she gets older, moving into the preschool years, she'll start making more purposeful movements and drawing basic shapes or objects.

Along with drawing, your child can practice her fine motor skills by finger painting, painting with brushes, cutting with scissors, tear tissue paper or modeling with soft clay.

Act It Out

You already read to your child. Now take this activity a step farther. Pick a favorite book and create an at-home play to go with it. Assign characters, find costumes in the dress-up bin and act out the story for friends and family members.

Daycare is helping your child to learn lessons galore. She's into science, art, math and reading. Take the early literacy building blocks she's developing and extend them with at-home activities. These will reinforce what she's doing at school and may even help her to expand them.