By Jan Pease
Why did an estimated 27% of Minnesota’s five-year-old
children enter Kindergarten unprepared? I tend to focus on that number, but that also
means that 73% of our kids did enter Kindergarten ready to learn. Since I began working here in 1991, that
number has been about the same: roughly
one quarter of the children entering Kindergarten are not ready for the
experience of school.
For several years I’ve been a partner of Read Aloud.org,
an organization that encourages parents to read to their children: “Every
child. Every parent. Every day.” Their
Read Aloud Toolkit gives a lot of information about this subject, and I’ve
borrowed a lot of that information for this essay. According to Readaloud.org, the single most
important thing we can do to help our children learn and develop is reading
aloud to them. Children are born with
about 100 billion neurons in their brains.
By age three there will be about 1,000 trillion connections between
them. Reading, talking and singing to
children builds these connections.
At Litchfield Library, we have discussed trying the 1000 Books
before Kindergarten program, which involves record keeping and prizes. I’ll leave that for my successor to
implement. Someday.
For now, I encourage
families to read 15 minutes each day, just as regular as tooth brushing is in
most families. According to the Read
Aloud Tool Kit, “only 48% of children in this country are read to each day.”
If you read just 15 minutes a day to your child, for 5
years, that adds up to 27,375 minutes. I
can easily read a picture book in 15 minutes, even with talking and asking
questions about the book. That number of
minutes would equal 1,825 books. That’s
a lot of books!
That leads me to another point. Reading isn’t passive. To draw your child into the story, ask
questions. If a book is about fall, ask,
“what colors do you see?” and “why do
some trees lose leaves and others don’t?”
If you’re outside, even without a book, look up at the clouds. Ask,
“what’s in the sky?” or “what
does that cloud look like to you?”
“What kind of cloud is that?” Or
from October first on, “is that a snow cloud?”
A newer study by Jill Gilkerson, Ph.D and Jeffrey A. Richard, MA is found in their book, “The Power of Talk: The Impact of Adult Talk, Conversational Turns, and TV during the Critical 0-4 years of Child Development.” This was published in 2009, but I haven’t found a copy of it, although articles by Jill Gilkerson, Ph.D are available through mnlink.org. Both studies showed that the number of words young children are exposed to has a direct impact on school and life success.
I had a delightful time interacting with a 15 month old
child who is just starting to talk. She
climbed on a couch, and we quickly made up a game of pretending she was asleep
and waking up. So fun. So important.
See you at the library!
