More than ever, parents are concerned about preparing their children to be successful in school. Everywhere, programs claim to increase babies' intelligence, spark preschooler's creativity, and insure a child's success in school. How do you sort through the various programs and give your child the best possible opportunity to succeed?< p>

As a parent, you are looking for tools to help your child be successful. In my years of practice as a speech language pathologist, I have worked with many kindergarden students at risk for reading delays. There are several common deficits that these children share: limited general world knowledge, limited exposure to literature, as well as limited vocabulary. Additionally, many young children do not enter kindergarden with rhyming perception, which is needed for phonics instruction in 1st grade. If a child somehow does not "grasp" rhyming in kindergarden, then participating in 1st grade reading instruction becomes very challenging indeed. Your secret tool in promoting readiness for young readers can be as close as Mother Goose's Treasury of Nursery Rhymes.

But how do nursery rhymes promote your child's pre-reading development? Spending 10 minutes reading nursery rhymes to your child before bedtime will provide several benefits. First, a collection of nursery rhymes is inexpensive, readily available, and will demonstrate the value of books. Print concepts such as turning the page, looking at pictures for context, and finding meaning in letters can most easily be learned when sitting in your lap. Additionally, the wide variety of topics and vocabulary contained in nursery rhymes will help develop your child's general background knowledge as well as expose her/him to rich vocabulary. Finally, the rhyming metre used in nursery rhymes can train your child's ear to "hear" the rhythm of rhyme. To recognize rhymes is a basic building block required for phonics instruction later on.

Please see future articles for how to use nursery rhymes as an instructional tool. For very young children, simply turning the page and discussing the illustrations is adequate. This can be expanded into reading full passages as the child grows. I highly recommend this practice to all parents!