Load up the SCHEMATA!

Think about the last book you read.

No, not the one you just read with your child.

That one - the one you wouldn't read aloud to your child because it had stuff for grown-ups in it.

What was it?

Me - I just finished a new work of fiction by Andrew Pyper called The Demonologist.

Was your book good?  Mine was excellent.

Did you understand it?  The dialogue, the setting, the themes, the events?

OF COURSE.

How?

Think about it.  How are you able to understand what you read?  Road signs, directions/instructions, blogs and facebook posts, novels and magazines, progress reports, menus ,and the list goes on.....

The odds are good you've been reading for quite some time, and you've had a lot of practice.  You've probably even had the chance to experience many things in the world around you.  You know what it feels like to have sand between your toes, to get ice cream from an ice cream shop, you can remember your first kiss and your first heart break, and surely you've slid your fingers along silk and velvet.  All of these experiences are now a part of you, part of your memory bank, and in turn - part of your schemata.

Reading is a mental act, and while engaged in the act, many things are happening inside your mind.  Mostly, connections are being made between the words you read and the knowledge you already possess, or your schemata (a fancy way of saying background knowledge).

Think of it this way...you are walking around with a giant file cabinet in your head.  It's tall and wide and full of labeled drawers.  Everywhere you go, you pick up a file.  This has been happening to you since birth.

• The first time you saw a cow...BOOM...filed in the animal drawer.  

• Your dad said "moo" as he pointed to the cow...BOOM...filed in the sound drawer. 

• Two weeks later at breakfast, Grandma said "this milk is yummy.  It came from a cow"...POP the animal drawer is opened, a copy of the cow file is made and ...BOOM...copy is filed in the food drawer. 

•  Later that night, Mom says Hey, Diddle, Diddle, POP...many drawers open and you remember that cows say moo and give milk, they don't jump over the moon.  

• Now Hey, Diddle, Diddle is very funny!  BOOM...that nursery rhyme is filed in the silly stuff drawer.

This is a simplified way of explaining one part of the reading process, but it's an important part of the process.  Your interactions, intentional or not, are helping to build your child's schemata.  Everything they touch, smell, eat, see, or hear becomes a part of the networked knowledge that will someday make them excellent readers.

So, go out in the world and experience lots of things with and for your little one.  Make bark rubbings with paper and crayons against tree trunks, show them the president's face on a bill from your wallet, take a letter to the post office and walk inside to mail it, put apples in the hanging scale at the grocery store and point to the needle as it moves to show the weight.  Talk about anything and everything, your vocabulary is the foundation for their vocabulary.

Now, go, be brave, say a lot and make lots of connections on behalf of your child's schemata...load it up!  And while you're at it...ENJOY!