Q&A with Peggy Kaye, HOMER’s Chief Curriculum Officer
Children who love books and stories before they are readers are very likely to love reading. Children who get lost in stories they hear, who imagine characters and feel for the problems characters face, are likely to also get lost in stories as they start reading. Being swept away to other worlds as you listen to stories is the path to being swept away to other words as you read for yourself.
This is why I recommend that parents start reading to children when they are very young and continue reading after children can read on their own. A family ritual of reading aloud can be hard to maintain when there are several children in a family, but it is worth the effort. The shared time between an adult, a child, and a book is one that doesn’t need to and, I believe, should not, stop just because a child is ready to read independently.
Digital books can also be an aid in this quest. At HOMER, we have a large library of stories children enjoy hearing over and over again. I recommend visiting StoryTime or Discover the World in the HOMER Reading app, or using HOMER Stories to help your child pick out stories about the things they love.
