ABSTRACT

Understanding how children learn language and literacy at home requires a complete analysis of the component elements involved as well as a description of how these elements interact. In this chapter, family literacy is viewed as the source of three broad categories of literacy experiences for young children: (a) experiences in which children interact with their parents in writing and reading situations; (b) experiences in which children explore print on their own; and (c) experiences in which children observe their parents modeling literate behaviors when they read or write themselves (Teale & Sulzby, 1986). In other words, parents actively engage their child in literate activities during shared reading or when they teach their child to write their name; they provide materials such as paper and crayons and picture-books that allow a child to explore how literacy works; and also, parents model literate acts when they open mail, write grocery lists, or read books for their own pleasure. Although these activities in young children’s lives foster learning, the description of family literacy in the present chapter will be limited to those activities that include print.