Abstract:

We often hear that children and young people are reading less and less, which has negative consequences in school. Stories can contribute to building values, acquiring vocabulary, learning to read and write at an early age and discovering a whole vast and wonderful world of knowledge. A love of reading and literature can be born in the daycare center, and kindergarten teachers and families have a huge responsibility for the first experiences associated with books. Thus, the family and the school play a key role in building interest and an emotional connection with books and, above all, with the act of reading. Bearing in mind the concern over the issue of early reading, a 15-week reading project was developed in the 2-year-old room of a daycare center in a city in the north of Portugal, involving 15 children and their families, as well as the nursery school teacher.

This project, which we are now presenting, had the following objectives:
1) to involve families in the act of reading;
2) to explore and develop literacy skills in children: reading attention, critical sense;
3) to develop an interest in and love of reading.

The results showed that all the families took part in the proposed tasks, but two did not fully follow the protocol. The results obtained after the intervention also point to a considerable improvement in the children's literacy skills in the classroom. Thus, with regard to reading attention, an improvement of around 60% could be observed in the storytelling moments. Also in these moments, most of the children were able to identify the characters, the emotions involved in the story and the order of events during the reading sessions in the room of daycare center, a situation that before the intervention, although it was emerging, did not occur in most of the children. The same trend was observed in relation to critical thinking, in that the children began to find more logical and meaningful solutions to problematic situations presented in the stories. With regard to interest in books and reading, there was also a significant and consistent increase, observed in the following situations: the emergence and frequent choice of the library area at times of free activity, the increase in requests for storytelling at times of transition and the fact that the children started bringing books from home as transitional objects. At the same time, there was an increased sense of responsibility and self-worth related to the fact that they independently chose a book, took it home and could keep it for around 3 to 4 days. However, these variables were not systematically recorded. The results point to the validation of both the importance of reading at daycare center and the involvement of families in the process of reading stories. The shared reading of stories facilitates the child's growth and development process. In this line of analysis, aimed at reflecting on the meaning of exploring stories in childhood, we were able to establish two dimensions that developed. A more cognitive dimension, reflected in literacy skills, and an emotional dimension, reflected in the playful and affective function of books.

Keywords:

Reading promotion, daycare center, literacy skills, family.