School has just begun. If you have a child who isn’t in school what does that have to do with you? A lot! No matter whether your child is 3 months or 3 years of age, it is time to get her ready for school. Readiness doesn’t begin when school begins; it begins now.

Start preparing your child for school by reading out loud to her. Read every day. Begin when she is a baby. Even if you read the same book over and over, it helps her learn new words. Don’t stop when she is off to school. Children in school still love to read with you. It is more than reading together; it is a special close bonding time together.

When you begin to read together and she is a baby, start out with board books with just a few words and lots of pictures. Point to the colors or the objects on the page and say their names. As you read your child learns when you point out the dog on the page and remind her of the dog you saw down the street yesterday.

As you read stories to her in the coming years, talk about the story with her. Ask her to guess what happens next in the story you are reading together. See what kind of stories she likes best and go to the library and find more on that topic. Get a library card for her at least by the time she can print her name.

Remember that your child likes to copy what you do. Let her see you reading books or the newspapers or magazines.

Encourage your child as she grows to write. Have her draw a picture and tell you what the picture is about. You write down what she tells you. From this experience she learns to tell stories that she can eventually write. Help her learn how to match a picture with the written word.

Encourage her writing or just plain scribbling as early as she picks up paper and pencils.

Talk with her so she can learn to talk really well. Talk about colors, sounds, smells, numbers and objects. Talk about what you are doing each day. She will learn with each conversation.

Encourage her to learn her numbers. This is the basis for the next multiple years of learning math. But none of the basic math is possible without first knowing how to count. That begins now.

Give her opportunities for her to talk to you to let you know what is important to her. If she wants to talk about a toy or a game, be interested in what she has to say. Let her hear you talking to others about what a great talker she is becoming.

Let her feel your excitement as she learns new words or new numbers or new colors. That makes her want to learn even more.

Just as these ideas help your child be ready for school, they also begin making the foundation for talking with your child throughout her growing years. Just as you can use help to get ready for school long before school begins, you also need to begin learning to talk together with this new little person who has come into your life. If you don’t talk together now, you are less likely to talk together in the years to come.

Enjoy your time together. Let this be a time of enjoyment and not a time of pressure and stress. Let her feel your love and your interest in what she is doing. Make sure she hears that she is important to you.

Cynthia D. Martin, Ph.D., is founder and past executive director of the Parenting Matters Foundation; reach her at cynthia.martin@olypen.com. To reach First Teacher Executive Director Nicole Brewer, email to nicole@firstteacher.org or call 360-681-2250.