By Natalie Bazinet
Staff Writer
LIMESTONE — About 10 parents and 12 kids attended the first meeting of the ABC Parent/Child Group on Oct. 18 at the Limestone Community School aimed at helping youths become better readers.
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First-grade teacher and second-grade literacy teacher Jenny Theriault had her students’ attention on Oct. 18 during the ABC Parent/Child Group activities.
“You can’t start reading to your kids too early,” said Speech Therapist Renee Parente.
From 6 until about 7:15 p.m., participants were split-up into two groups. Kids from grades preK to second were taught by first-grade teacher and second grade literacy teacher Jenny Theriault for some fun Five Little Pumpkins themed activities, and the adults spent the evening with Parente learning ways to help their children on their paths to literacy.
While the kids read together, watched a short video and perfected their arts and crafts projects, Parente emphasized with parents the importance of three guiding principles to help small children become avid readers, which included points like:
• parents know their children best;
• teamwork between parents and teachers can help a child excel at reading; and
• better readers have greater success in school.
“The important thing is that you want to provide kids with a lot of exposure to reading, but it always needs to be fun and pleasurable,” Parente explained, adding that when kids are small, they might not have the patience to sit still for 20 minutes. For example, it might be better for all parties involved if parents focus on reading more frequently with their child rather than reading for a long period of time.
“You’re always teaching early on, and books with pictures help support the context and draw connections,” Parente said. “Sometimes parents will even do a book walk-through, where they go through the book and don’t even read it. Later on, parents can point to the words while they read the book,” she added.
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Simon Hotelling and Braden Gould were diligent colorers during the ABC Parent/Child Group event on Oct. 18 at the Limestone Community School.
But literacy isn’t all about sitting down with a book.
Print awareness is a huge factor in literacy, and one point that Parente discussed with the parent group.
“They generated a list of anywhere that you could be drawing your child’s attention to written words — signs, menus, shirts and packaging — and they talked about who reads, what they read, where they read and when they read,” Parente said.
Parents also talked about ways to introduce youths to new books without having it cost a lot of money.
But as Parente explained, people develop oral language first and then they start reading.
“We think in language, school instruction is based on language — it’s how we communicate,” she said. “The more words we have, the better skill we have at thinking about things and conveying thoughts to others.”
Which is why helping youths expand their vocabulary is key to helping them express themselves.
All who participated in ABC Parent/Child Group were given literacy prizes at the end of the evening, and each student was given the opportunity to take a book home with them.
“They each started out with one, but some of them went home with five,” Parente said (adding that she had a hard time saying ‘no’ when kids say they want more books to read).
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At left, Abagayle St. Peter carefully pasted her arts and crafts project together during a literacy-themed evening at the Limestone Community School.
