Engage your child during story time. Easy as one fish, two fish.
When choosing a book, offer choices to your child to see which book they would like to read! You can do this by asking them which book they would like to read or by placing 2-3 books on the floor and have them point to a book.
When you are reading the book be sure to give reinforcing statements to our child such as “wow, I love how you are looking at the book!” or “ you are sitting so nicely during story time, way to go!” to make this time more fun!
As you are reading the story it may be a good idea to try to engage them by asking them questions on each page. This will vary depending on your child’s skill level.
For example:
“How many fish are there? Let’s count”
“Touch the red fish!”
“What color is this fish?”
“Where do fish live?”
When your child is ready, you can also make this more advanced by asking them to summarize a scene in the book or the entire book, i.e. “ tell me what happened on this page!”, “ can you tell me a character in the book?”, or “ what was your favorite part of the book?”. This may also be a time where you and your kiddo can take turns reading, they may even enjoy asking you questions about the story too!
This is great practice for your child to sit and attend to a task, answer WH questions, develop listener comprehension skills, and fun family time!
This blog entry was written by Shelly Smart M.Ed., BCBA, LBA, our Lead BCBA in our Boulder Hive in Colorado.
