Literacy at Home

We know literacy at home is important.  To be successful at anything in our lives, we need practice.  And reading is no different.  For our students to become stronger readers, critical thinkers, and problem solvers, they must be able to practice those skills during school hours and outside of those hours.

There are so many fantastic ideas out there to help engage families in literacy, such as: events at the school, game nights, conferences, open houses, curriculum nights, and newsletters.  Many teachers send home books bags or homework.  All of these decisions are a way to engage families in educational conversations with their children.

Then I had my own children.

Many things I do with my girls has an educational spin.  Literacy is ever-present in our daily home.  Since they were very little, my girls have carried around the grocery list and checked off the items we put into our cart. Even before they were able to talk, I was pointing out words and colors on the trucks that passed by our car.  As they got older, we were reading the trucks and bulletin boards or discussing the meaning behind the lyrics that we were singing.  None of these ideas are ground breaking.

But it made me wonder...what are my students doing at home that are literacy based activities?  Do all families think to discuss the grocery list?  Do families collect as many acorns as they possibly can during a walk and then count them by ones, twos, or tens?  Is this just what you do with your own children naturally or does it come from my educational background?

So I asked around.

And what I found is that it is probably both.  Each family is unique and provides different learning experiences for their children based on their comfort level.  But there may be some things I do with my kids, that do come from my background of constant reading of educational blogs and teacher books.

This got me thinking...

I want literacy to be enjoyable for my students and their families.  I know for some homework and nightly reading can bring back some unpleasant experiences for parents that struggled to read.  So to help promote some positive experiences, I decided to create a quarterly newsletter.  It is not meant to replace reading, homework, literacy nights, or anything else.  I simply wanted to provide user friendly fun for families.

There is one newsletter for each season.  Three activities are introduced.  There are some "important dates."  Most of these are authors' birthdays or national literacy days.

I would love to get your thoughts.  Do you think families would appreciate some fun ideas to incorporate literacy into their everyday lives?  If you want to check out all of the sheets, just click on the image above.  It is FREE!

Em