Today is for the moms 

who spent hours

calling our spelling words

quizzing state capitols 

reading paper after paper. 

Today is for the moms

who sacrificed

for our education

for our success

for our future. 

Today is for the moms

who dreamed 

who said

You can be

whoever you want to be. 

Today is for you, moms! 

As you are reading with an emergent reader, it's fascinating to see how just after a couple of repeated readings, he or she is already learing and internalizing the story. Some people might call this memorizing, but in reality your child is understanding word play and story structure. 

When I am reading a familiar book with a 4 or 5 year old, one of my favorite things to do is to leave out the last word on the page. I wait for two to three seconds and see if he or she fills in the word. It's amazing to me to experience those times when the word is complex and difficult and he or she says it without hesitation. 

When you think about it, it really is amazing how language develops so quickly for young readers! 

Today, I got to celebrate my friend's daughter's first birthday party and I was struck by how much early literacy she was weaving in and out of the experience. Between the reading of the cards and the conversation about what she was opening, she was seamlessly surrounding her daughter with words. 

And this is how it should be. While I can offer some suggestions about how to create literacy-rich experiences for your child, I can't say how you should do it. It should be natural and it should be flavored with your own interests and your own passions. 

So, share with us how you do this. What do you do to help your child learn and experience literacy?

If you are interested in looking for some apps that are great for developing early literacy, check these out!

Available as a Universal App for iPad & iPhone, Intro to Letters brings the alphabet to your child’s fingertips as they learn to trace, recognize, write and record letter sounds, names, and phonograms. Includes support for US English, UK English, French & German.

Now I like this:

Children might be assigned different tasks, with one checking capitalization and another making sure there are spaces between words. Roth says it's the concept of a "shared pen" that makes the approach unique

I wish I had known about this approach when I was teaching! What a good way to encourage students' strengths and encourage them to continues to grow!

Now this is more like it:

A recent research study conducted in Auburn, Maine has shown that “Kindergartner students using iPads scored better on literacy tests than students that didn’t use the device.”

While there are numerous other factors that contribute to students' success, iPads are adding to literacy developmet not detracting. 

These results do not surprise me. As the parent of a toddler I have had the privilege of watching her evolve using the iPad from hesitant and cautious tapping at things almost randomly to a confident and skilled user of the device. This skill combined with the thirst for knowledge that grips young children presents a unique opportunity for the iPad.

The iPad isn't the only tool that can help emergent readers and writers gain more confidence, but it certainly is a useful one! 

Early learning centers and options aren't just good for emergent readers and writers, they're also good for the development of a community: 

Some of the innovations underway include efforts to ramp up the quality of child care by aligning curriculum and improving instructional practices of early-learning programs, providing comprehensive intervention and social services for families in "one-stop" hubs, and focusing attention on workforce development.

If you had to choose, what would your child's early learning experience have that it doesn't?

I live and breathe books, especially children's books. 

So I'd like to share some of these wonderful books and why I love them. 

I just recently used Llama, Llama Red Pajama with one of my students and fell in love with it again. 

Not only is it a rythmic, fun story, but it plays with the relationship between mother and child.

What mother can't identify with a child who they thought was sleeping soundly and suddenly screams at the top of his or her lungs?

The storyline is something familiar and the word families that center are llama are fun and quirky!

If you haven't read this book with your emergent reader, read it tonight!

It's interesting to see this kind of attitude from a professional. I wonder if she has researched the different reading and writing apps to find that iPads aren't only for "play," but rather have been designed for individialized learning and interaction. 

If you have seen a 3 or 4 year old use an iPad, you realize that they are learning problem solving and are fullly engaged in process learning as they figure out how to go back and forth on the iPad. 

Still, that shouldn't stop parents and preschools from urging kids to learn to write the old-fashioned way—with pencil and paper, instead of pushing a button or swiping the screen on an iPad, Dinehart said. In a column published Tuesday on cnn.com, she provides tips on how to get kids to write, including keeping lots of crayons, markers and sidewalk chalk around the house.

"It's not realistic to say that [kids] are not going to play with electronics at all, but one shouldn't replace the other," Dinehart said

The way that she says play indicates that she doesn't realize the deep impact that play plays into literacy development. It's in those games of restaurant where kids are writing down orders or reading a menu that kids develop the real world need for literacy. 

It's in writing the grocery list with a parent that kids learn literacy. 

All of these may be considered play, but a love of literacy starts with playing with words and writing. 

Sure I want my students to do well on a 2nd grade standardized test, but more than that, I want them to love language for the rest of their lives. 

So maybe a device that lets you "play" with words is really the best way to engage emergent readers and writers. 

Did you know that when your child points out a McDonald's sign or a Chick-fil-A sign, they are reading?

When you hear your child point and say, "Stop!" they are engaging with the literary environment that they are encountering. They are recognizing familiar environmental print. 

The car is a perfect place to start build the foundation for reading and the foundation for enjoying words and word play with games like sign ABC. 

Before there were DVD players or iPads, there were long car rides and parents who wanted to entertain their children. 

I've heard of a lot of people who played sign ABC. You and your children can look for words that start with the different letters of the alphabet. It's fun and takes at least 26 minutes! 

When you invite your children to look outside at their environment, you are helping them become good readers!