Fawniks is an online resource for parents who want to help their children aged 0-6 — infants, toddlers, preschoolers and kindergartners — become fluent readers.
Educating today’s children is our best hope for a brighter tomorrow. In fact, the future of our beloved earth is in the hands of today’s highly literate children. Developing a high level of literacy in children begins with a bedtime story. For us parents, there is no greater and more precious gift that we can pass on to our children than sparing 15 minutes of our time to read them a story before we tuck them in and kiss them goodnight.
Great parenting starts with a bedtime story.
Reading a bedtime story for your little ones is a small investment that pays enormous dividends. Several studies have shown that the amount of time adults read for or with their children does predict their reading skills in elementary school.
One of the most important predictors of how well a child will learn to read is the size and quality of his spoken language and vocabulary, and children are more likely to be exposed to new words and their meanings or pick up grammar rules from reading aloud with adults. Talking with your child frequently and engaging their listening and storytelling skills can increase their vocabulary.
This website will recommend resources in four areas: sound, letter, comprehension and numeracy.
Sound
Spoken language is made up of individual sounds. The individual sounds are called phonemes. The phonemes form syllables, syllables form words and words form sentences.
Phonological Awareness
Phonology is the study of the spoken language, and so to be phonologically aware is to be aware of the sound system of the language you speak, hence the term ‘phonological awareness’.
Children with phonological awareness can more easily detect the phonological features of speech. The two most important features of phonology are syllables and phonemes. Children with ability to recognize or identify changes in speech at a phonemic level, for instance, hear rhymes and detect alliterations, are said to have phonemic awareness.
Phonemic awareness is thought of as the best predictor of the child’s future reading fluency.