National Share-a-Story Month gives us a great excuse to spend time celebrating and having fun with books. However, reading stories and looking at picture books together is one of the best ways in which you can support children's spoken and written language development.
Here are some Clickety Top Tips for sharing Early Soundplay stories:
Reading the stories
- - If you’re not confident about reading a story out loud listen to the story on the CD first. Before you share the story with the children you could read along with the CD for practice.
- - Sit at the same level as the children so you can engage them more easily.
- - Show them the cover and read the title pointing to each word.
- - Point out the characters’ key features, for example Tess and Bess’s big ears for good listening.
- - Introduce the puppets and encourage the children to handle and look at them carefully.
- - Spend time on the ‘Things to look out for…’ as it will introduce the children to key animals and objects.
- - As you read the story give the children plenty of time to look at the pictures.
- - Respond to the children if they ask questions and comment - it means they’re listening!
- - Enjoy the sound play as you read – pointing out rhyme and the sounds at the beginning and ends of words
- - ‘Did you spot the special words? ‘Did you spot the special words?’ Ask the children if they can hear the special sound in the words.
Repetition is important and children love to hear stories read again and again! Once the children are familiar with the story you can start to ask them questions about the story. Use the puppets to support your activities. Introduce puppets to bring stories to life and support children to retell or role play familiar stories. You can download Clickety Early Soundplay characters to make lolly stick puppets here.
Above all every shared reading experience should be fun. It’s also one that provides children with a variety of meaningful opportunities to develop many essential language and literacy skills.