Readers React: Music can help teach children to read

To the editor: Clearly it is important for parents to read to their children. However, that is just one of several crucial things parents should be doing with their kids before they start school. (“Read to your kids? Of course!,” July 4)

Nursery rhymes, music, dancing, keeping the beat and pointing out symbols on signs are all crucial skills for emerging readers. After all, if they don’t have a sense of inner timing (which they get through music and rhymes), reading fluently will be difficult.

If children don’t understand the abstract concept of what a symbol is, they won’t comprehend that letters are symbols for sounds. If they don’t move and dance, they won’t have the gross motor skills needed to cross the midline and therefore may have difficulty going from left to right with their eyes when they read.

Through practice in a fun and joyful way, parents can help their children get these skills in place in addition to daily reading.

Beth Sussman, Sherman Oaks

The writer is a master teaching artist of music at the Los Angeles Music Center.