Some of your children might be coming home smiling from face to finger. We have a "reading" good reason!

When we teach children to read we ensure that they are pointing with one finger.

How do we decide which finger this is? By now your child will have worked out if they are left or right handed though writing, balancing activities, picking up items etc. Their pointing finger is the one beside the thumb on their dominant hand. The smile is a visual reminder for them to use the one finger. I also say "can your smile read the word too?" ... to encourage children to point under the word.

This is important as children consolidate important ideas about concepts of print such as starting points to read, reading left to right, top line to bottom line. 

They can also start to use pointing as a reading strategy when they have one-to-one matching (they can point to each word as they read). 

This strategy works through realising they either have to many words or not enough words from the ones they have read.

Reading at home - Have you noticed your child's pointing? Often children use the left hand for the left page and the right hand for the right page - we are looking for them to use their dominant hand on both pages!