The Canastota Public Library offers a “1,000 Books before Kindergarten” initiative and we are accepting babies and all preschoolers into the program. As parents, we all want to see our children succeed. A great way to do that is to read to your child. Studies have shown that reading to children activates the parts of a preschooler’s brain that helps them with mental imagery and understanding narrative, both of which are key for the development of language and literacy.
As a part of the program, when you sign up your child, you will receive resources for reading with your child, such as recommended books and handouts to help your child with colors, numbers and the alphabet. There are a couple of different ways that you can track your reading, either through an app that you can download or through reading logs available from the library. You can find the app for the program through the library staff are happy to help with suggestions of some of their favorite children’s books. The Canastota Public Library also offers your child incentives for every 100 books read.
The concept is simple and the rewards of this initiative are priceless. Read a book (any book) to your newborn, infant or toddler. The goal is to read 1,000 books together before your little one begins kindergarten. If you read one book a night to your child, at the end of the year, you will have read 365 books. That is 730 books read in two years and 1,095 books read in three years. Since children generally begin kindergarten at age 5, there is plenty of time to meet the goals of this initiative. Since this initiative is self-paced, you decide how often you will read together and what books you will read.
Reading together with your child helps develop important pre-reading skills that provide a solid reading foundation, which is a key to school and learning success. By reading together, you can create great memories for both of you, as well as facilitating a great opportunity to bond in another way with your child. If you have more than one child who hasn’t entered kindergarten, consider reading as a family to meet the 1,000 Books before Kindergarten goal. Stop by the library in June to sign up your child for 1,000 Books before Kindergarten.