Early Learning Tips

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Learn how to help a young child get ready to read

When you talk, sing, read, write and play with a young child, you stimulate the growth of their brain and build connections that become the building blocks for reading and lifelong learning. Discover even more ways you can support their learning with the library’s early learning workshops and tips.

Early learning video tips

Learn ways to support your child’s early learning by watching these short videos. Find out more about what is early literacy, how a child learns to read, ways to support children learning more than one language, and how the activities, talk, sing, read, write, and play, help support children during their earliest years. 

Click to discover ways to help children get ready to learn to read from birth



 

Find these great books at your local library to support your child's early learning development:


Rainy Day Rocket Ship by Markette Sheppard with illustrations by Charly Palmer
From the bark of a dog to the roar of a rocket ship, explore a variety of sounds with your young readers as you blast off into space and avoid getting soaked by the pitter patter of a rainy day.
 


Saturday by Oge Mora
A mother and her daughter enjoy some peaceful lounging or zipping around town on Saturdays. Oge Mora fills this story with rarer or unusual words for you to describe or act them out with your child so they better understand what they mean. Lounge about or zip around with your child as you read!

A Big Mooncake for Little Star by Grace Lin
Night after night Little Star slowly eats a mooncake out of the sky. As it disappears you and your child can talk about how the mooncake changes its shape and size until its nothing but itty-bitty crumbs. This change represents the early math idea of subtraction, and talking to your child about it helps them better understand this concept.  
 
Another by Christian Robinson
Wordless books like “Another” help you read in the language you know best. Doing so makes it easy for you to use as many words as possible when reading with your child. This rich language experience helps them build a strong vocabulary.
 
Bathe the Cat by Alice B. McGinty with illustrations by David RobertsReading with your child helps them learn a variety of early-literacy skills, especially knowing what letters look like and how they work. This book uses letters in a very playful way. Talk about, name, and play with the sounds of these colorful letters as you see them throughout this book. 


Discover more ways to help young children get ready to learn to read here.