Teach Early Years - Issue 14.2

to “put their phones down and pick up a book” as part of a government campaign to improve reading habits and make more children school ready. The announcement comes as the government prepares to launch its Best Start in Life strategy, including new funding for partnerships between schools and local nurseries to “strengthen transitions into school and break down barriers from day one”. Go on to print these out so that everyone has a set of jokes. We helped children make their own simple joke books by folding A5 sheets of paper in half and fixing these together with a length of string. Children then cut out the pre-printed jokes and glued each one onto a separate page in their books. They drew their own pictures on the pages next to the jokes so they could be “the illustrator”. We finished our books by writing “Joke Book” on the cover and adding the child’s name as though they were the author, so they looked like the books we’d been looking at in nursery. Children traced over our writing for this. Create a book club For this activity, simply collect a selection of picture books, then once a week have a book-swap day, where children can choose a book to take home for the week. Ask parents if they can share the books with their children, which should be brought back in one week’s time to allow children to share their thoughts on what they borrowed during circle time. This is a lovely activity for furthering communication and language and personal, social and emotional development by encouraging independent choosing and responsibility for looking after a borrowed object, and also helps to foster a love of books. Every childwas allowed to choose one book to take back to nursery In support of this initiative, the Department for Education and the National Literacy Trust have joined forces to launch a National Year of Reading, starting in January 2026, to kickstart a reading revolution with the aim of reversing the decline in reading for pleasure among children and young people – just one in three aged eight to 18 said they enjoyed reading in their free time in 2025 (bit.ly/4mTn3KV ). POST-VISIT ACTIVITIES Make a joke book After our visit we talked about all the different types of books there are: funny books, scary books, map books, guidebooks, etc. One type of book that might not be thought of is the joke book, and we had a lot of fun making some with our three-year-olds. Begin by telling some jokes. Some good ones for this age group could be: Why didn’t the skeleton go to the dance? Because he had no body to go with! How does the sea say hello? It just waves! What do you call a sleeping dinosaur? A dino-snore! What kind of flowers grow on your face? Tu-lips! What do you call a donkey with three legs? A Wonkey! FIVE LIBRARY VISIT TIPS 1 Let the library know you’re planning a visit to make sure it doesn’t clash with other activities they may be holding. Some libraries will offer to hold a story-reading session for your children if they know in advance. 2 Use your visit to explore new vocabulary. Children love to learn words that seem grown-up, such as librarian , author , illustrator , photocopier , fiction and non-fiction . Don’t worry if they forget the new words; building vocabulary is all about increasing your connection with words organically over time. 3 Allow children to take part in the checking-out and returning of books to encourage independence and autonomy. 4 Encourage children to make their own choices by picking books to look at and borrow, exerting their own preferences, and deciding for themselves which titles they are interested in. 5 Make your visits a regular occurrence. By familiarising themselves with the library, children begin to see themselves as readers and library-goers. Teachearlyyears.com 51