Literacy Is Everywhere: Why Summer May Be the Best Time to Build a Reader
Every summer, parents hear the same message: prevent the "summer slide." We stock up on workbooks, reading logs, flashcards, and educational games because we want our children to continue learning while school is out. As a former classroom teacher, I understand those concerns, and I still believe reading together and maintaining academic routines are important. Many parents ask me about flashcards, sight words, and which workbooks to buy. However, over the years, both as an educator and through my doctoral research, I've come to think about summer a little differently.
One of the greatest gifts summer gives children isn't another worksheet. It's experiences.
Those experiences matter because they build two essential ingredients for reading success: vocabulary and background knowledge.
Vocabulary is the collection of words children understand and use to communicate. Background knowledge is everything children know about the world through their own experiences. Together, these two skills help children make sense of what they read. Reading comprehension is not simply about decoding the words on a page. It's about understanding them. The more children know about the world and the more language they have to describe it, the easier it becomes to connect with books, ask questions, make predictions, and understand increasingly complex texts.
The journey toward literacy doesn't begin on the first day of kindergarten. It begins in infancy. Long before children can speak or read independently, they are building the language, vocabulary, and experiences that will eventually help them make sense of books. A baby listening to a caregiver describe a neighborhood walk, a toddler pointing to construction vehicles, and a school age child asking questions at a baseball game are all on the same developmental journey. The experiences become more complex as children grow, but the foundation is built through responsive conversations and shared experiences from the very beginning.
Research consistently shows that responsive conversations and shared experiences support children's language development, vocabulary growth, and later reading comprehension. Although some children experience learning loss over the summer, research also suggests those effects vary depending on children's access to books, enriching experiences, and opportunities to use language in meaningful ways. Reading together and completing academic activities certainly have a place, but they are only one piece of the puzzle.
Every season offers children new opportunities to build language, but summer may provide more opportunities than any other time of year. Whether your family is traveling across the country, enjoying a staycation, visiting grandparents, or simply spending more time together, everyday experiences become opportunities for conversation.
In many ways, vacation, or even a simple day trip, begins before you ever leave home. Narrating while you pack a suitcase, describing what you see out the car window, singing songs during a long drive, or pointing out airplanes overhead exposes infants to rich language long before they understand every word. As children grow, those same experiences become opportunities to ask questions, make predictions, make lists, read maps, identify license plates from different states, estimate distances, and connect what they see to what they already know. Long before you arrive at your destination, children are building vocabulary, sequencing skills, and background knowledge without even realizing it.
Some of my favorite literacy experiences don't look anything like school. They happen in the everyday moments families already share. Around the dinner table, an infant may simply watch, listen, and hear new words as caregivers talk and narrate. A toddler may help stir ingredients, name foods, or describe what they taste, while older children might read a recipe, compare ingredients, order from a menu, or help create a shopping list. Grocery stores and farmers markets offer similar opportunities as children read labels, compare products, estimate quantities, and help find items on the list.
The same is true for the activities our children already love. Whether your family spends weekends at baseball games, gymnastics meets, basketball tournaments, dance recitals, or soccer matches, every event creates opportunities for conversation and learning. As children grow, they begin reading schedules, player names, scoreboards, statistics, programs, maps, and websites while asking questions about the game, the people, and the places around them.
Perhaps my favorite part of this idea is that it has nothing to do with how much money a family spends. A week at Disney World and a morning at your local library can both spark rich conversations, introduce new vocabulary, and create lasting memories. A neighborhood walk can lead to discussions about construction vehicles, flowers, insects, weather, or community helpers. Visiting a local park, attending free library programs, exploring a museum on a free admission day, taking the Staten Island Ferry, cooking a new recipe together, or simply watching airplanes fly overhead can all build the same foundation for literacy.
When literacy is connected to children's interests and everyday experiences, they naturally become curious and motivated to learn more. Children don't measure experiences by their price tag. They remember the conversations they had, the questions they asked, and the discoveries they made alongside someone who was present and engaged.
Whether your family is taking a vacation, enjoying a staycation, or simply making the most of everyday moments at home, meaningful learning is still happening. Every new experience adds to your child's vocabulary and background knowledge, helping them make sense of the stories they'll read and the world they'll continue to explore.
This summer, my goal isn't to choose between academics and experiences. It's to recognize that both have value. We'll continue reading together, visit the library, complete some academic work, and maintain routines, but we'll also embrace the conversations that naturally happen while living life.
So as you head into the rest of the summer, don't just ask, "How many pages did we read today?" Also ask, "What did we experience today? What new words did we learn? What questions did we ask? What did we discover together?"
Whether your child is six months old or ten years old, every conversation, every outing, and every shared experience is helping build the language and knowledge they will one day bring to the books they read. The journey toward literacy begins in infancy through relationships, conversation, and curiosity, growing stronger with every new experience along the way. Reading together will always matter, but so will the life children bring to the books they read. Every conversation, every place they explore, and every experience they have becomes part of the meaning they bring to the next book they open.
The Research Behind This Post
This article is informed by decades of research on children's oral language development, vocabulary acquisition, background knowledge, and reading comprehension. Research consistently demonstrates that responsive adult-child conversations, rich language experiences, and opportunities to build knowledge about the world support later language, literacy, and reading comprehension. The ideas shared throughout this article have been shaped by the work of I. L. Beck and M. G. McKeown on vocabulary development, E. D. Hirsch Jr. on the role of background knowledge in reading comprehension, C. E. Snow on oral language development, and the findings of the National Reading Panel on vocabulary and reading comprehension instruction.
While this article focuses on summer, the larger message extends far beyond one season. Literacy development is not confined to classrooms, workbooks, or even books themselves. It begins in infancy and continues through the everyday interactions, conversations, and experiences that help children make sense of the world long before they learn to read it independently.
