Reading and Writing

I am taking an emergent literacy class right now and it has been fascinating. I think most of us have read a pamphlet, heard a radio commercial or been exposed to the importance of reading to our children in one form or another. This class is letting me dive deeper into the topic and I'm loving it. It's teaching me how to enhance my children's reading comprehension by asking them simple questions during our reading time. For example, I never thought about doing this before but I'll show the kids the front of the book, read the title and show the back cover and ask them, "What do you think this book is about?" It teaches them to start learning predicting skills and then after you read the book talk about their orginial prediction and what the book was actually about.
Another "aha" experience I've had is that scribbling is to writing as babbling is to talking. I'm learning the importance of letting our kids write......that writing and reading go hand and hand. It's not just tracing, etc. but keeping paper and pencils, etc. accessible so they can write, draw, scribble to their hearts content. I am also learning to model everyday uses of print. Grocery lists, to do lists, writing checks, etc. By modeling this and providing paper and pencils for our children to use at will we can encourage them to incorparte these things into their "pretend play." When they pretend to go shopping they can "write" their lists or write their "recipets". Or when they are pretending to go to the doctors they can "write" their doctors recommendations.
This class has been so interesting to me! I'm excited for the next two that build on this one!