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Family Literacy Day: Literacy lessons in life

You are your child’s first teacher
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Family Literacy Squares contest (Submitted)

Kimberly Vance-Lundsbye

Special to the Free Press

You are your child’s first teacher. But don’t be so quick to pull out the flashcards or a pre-school workbook. Unless your child enjoys those activities, there are easier ways to include numbers and letters into your time spent around the kitchen table.

Family Literacy Day on Jan. 27 is something to celebrate. Early learning is so important for kids. When you can navigate all the information around you as a new reader who can also tell the time, you can make more choices and share ideas. You can contribute.

Most of us can remember the first time our child sounded out a few words in a book, but those squiggly lines on scrap paper are equally as important. Sorting the laundry by colour, while learning the words for blue and green and pointing out the lit-up number at the check-out in the store, are important milestones, too. In fact, you need a lot of repetitions of activities like those before you get to reading on your own.

Parents, grandparents, and daycare teachers practice family literacy activities all day long.

Often, we do it instinctively. A grandparent might let their grandchild scribble a few additions to a shopping list or an older sibling may read out the letters on a stop sign to their little brother. Isn’t that amazing? The key is time spent together connecting with the child.

This year, we are holding a Family Literacy Squares Contest. To enter, let us know how many squares you crossed off this month on a post on our Facebook page. We have prizes to be won for both Williams Lake and 100 Mile kids.

A lucky family in each community will take home a backpack full of books and art supplies and another will win a new sled. The contest draw is Jan. 31.

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