November is Family Literacy Month, and the National Center for Families Learning is promoting their guide to 30 Days of Families Learning. The guide has literacy activities and practices for every day of the month designed to inspire family memory-making as families play, imagine and learn together. Activities include “Mystery Dinner Guests,” where each person chooses and researches a famous person before dinner, and then while eating everyone takes turns asking questions about each other’s mystery person, trying to guess the guest; or “Listen to Your Children’s Stories,” where children tell a story to the adults, and the adults write down the stories and save them to be read in the future. Many of the activities are excellent even for youngsters who aren’t quite reading yet, as they stimulate language and story-telling skills.
Reading Rockets also has free, printable reading adventure packs online for fostering literacy this month. Reading adventure packs include both fiction and nonfiction reading materials, a creativity activity, an imagination activity and a “get real” activity, which focuses on real-world experiences for parent and child. The packs are organized by grade level and theme, and can be downloaded from the Reading Rockets website.
For teachers, the International Reading Association has compiled literacy lesson plans for K-8 classrooms. The lesson plans all involve students’ families. Lessons include creating family timelines, sharing family stories, and writing to their families.
