Singing with Preschoolers

At story time we teach that parents should Talk, Sing, Read, Write, and Play with their children every day to help them be ready to be good readers.  Why is singing important for early literacy?

Reading requires two skills, decoding and comprehension.  A child needs to be able to figure out what the word is (decoding) and what it means (comprehension). For example, you can sound out (or decode) the word "fresas" but if you don't know Spanish you may not know that it means "strawberries" (comprehension). Kids need both skills to be successful readers.

Singing helps with both these skills.  When we sing we naturally divide words into sound parts. Think of Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star. "Twinkle" is one word, but in the song we divide it up into two parts, "Twin-kle".  Learning that words are made of sound parts is the first step to understanding that each letter in a word contributes a sound. Singing songs helps children be ready to learn to "sound out" words as part of decoding.

Twinkle Twinkle Little Star is also a good example of how singing helps with comprehension. Language is made of common words, ones we say frequently, and rare words, ones that don't often occur in daily conversation. Most children easily learn the common words, but not all children are exposed to the same amount of rare words.  How often do you use the word, "twinkle" in daily conversation? A child who never sang Twinkle Twinkle Little Star might not know the word "twinkle" when they start kindergarten, but any child who has sung the song, will. Think of other common children's songs. What rare words do you find?

So that is why we sing every week in Story Time. We want kids to learn decoding and comprehension skills. We encourage parents to sing with their children as well. It doesn't really matter if you have a good voice, or even if you can carry a tune. The more we sing with small children, the better prepared they will be to become good readers.