When my kids were little, I selected their reading materials from the picture book section of my library and book store. In retrospect, I was limiting my children’s literature to fairy tales, Dr. Seuss and fiction of all kinds.
Yet children need exposure to nonfiction as well: how to books, how things work books, information about animals and the natural world we live in, biographies, history, books with maps and tables, books about dinosaurs, even current events news.
Take a quick survey of the books you have read to your preschooler in the past week. Were any of them nonfiction?
Expand your child’s horizons starting today. Find the nonfiction section of the children’s section of your library and see what’s there that might interest your child.
- Does he like dinosaurs? Lots of books explore the lives of these amazing creatures. Or does he have a pet? Books on dogs, cats, birds and almost every other animal abound.
- Is your daughter into fashion? Find books about how clothes have changed over the centuries. Find a biography of Coco Channel. Look for a magazine with Downton Abbey or Academy Award dresses.
- Is your child into building? You can find books and magazines on how to build a soap box, a tree house or a house of cards. Or you can learn how a spider builds a web, how a bird builds a nest or how a beaver dams a stream to build a house with an underwater doorway.
- Do you travel with your child? Magazines highlight fascinating places around the world. Even if your child can’t read, together you can compare your home with the ones pictured. Or together you can wonder what it would be like to take a gondola ride or to walk on the Great Wall of China. Maybe you could plan a vacation.
- Did Grandpa serve in the Army? Let Grandpa read to your child about the locations where he served or about the military uniforms he wore. Did Grandpa fly a jet? Find books about military aircraft.
- Cooking books are great how-to books. With your child, find a picture of something you would like to eat and cook it together.
- How about the handbook for your car? Or you phone? Your child and you can look over the pictures and identify parts and what they do, picking up vocabulary.
- Look for books with maps, charts, tables, pictographs, photos and other non-textual ways of presenting information. Help your child to understand what those graphics mean.
Reading nonfiction is harder than reading fiction, yet students must be adept at both kinds of literature under the Common Core State Standards. Start now preparing your child for his future by exploring nonfiction together.