Parents who tell stories, kids who read in the future

Abstract

This paper presents a story telling proposal between parents and children in public kinder garden schools. Based on McGuinness (2006), that says that parents can make a difference on their children linguistic apparatus, this research justifies that story telling between parents and children may improve the development of important linguistic skills for speaking, writing and reading and it may also offer an environment of literacy, which few children from poor social classes have. This project was held in two public kinder garden schools with children between 3 and 5 years old. Parents were invited for meetings where the importance of the project was presented. “Reading Bags” were distributed. Each bag contained books for the children and magazines for the parents. The children took the bags home in turns. After all children took them home, parents were interviewed to evaluate the project. According to parents the activity was positive and offered linguistic and affective benefits, and as such should keep on as a family habit.