Preschool and Literacy

I just saw this article posted in a journal I read:

Hood, M. et al. (2008). Preschool home literacy practices and children's literacy development: A longitudinal analysis. Journal of Educational Psychology, Vol 100(2), 252-271.

New results on preschool reading have been published from a longitudinal study out of Australia. They tracked parent literacy rates, parent-child reading frequency during preschool years and parent letter-sound instruction with preschoolers.

While there was no correlation between parent-child reading frequency and phonological awareness in kindergarten or grade 1, it did improve receptive language skills. Parent teaching of letter sounds did correlate with phonological awareness by grade 2.

Overall, while parent-child reading practices during preschool years somewhat affects early literacy, once a year or two of schooling is underway, most of these differences disappear.

Here is a link to the article (it is fee-based, but you can access the abstract).