One of the things children need to know before they start reading and writing, is that spoken words can be written down.  When we read a book, we are not looking at the pictures and talking about what we see; we are reading the text.  Be explicit about this. Children also need to learn that when we read English, we start at the top left corner of the text and move horizontally across the line of text from left to right.  When we come to the end of the line of text, we return to the left side of the line of text below the one we just read.  These simple things that we take for granted as adult readers can be easily taught to preschoolers if you sometimes point and talk about what you are doing, as you read.  Children will start to follow these conventions in their pretend reading because they are so motivated to be just like the adults they care for.  For more information click on this link: Concepts of Print

Read Jake Stays Awake and point to the text as you read.  It's a good choice for this because the text is brief and there's lots of opportunity to talk about the pictures.  Some children will let you direct their pointer finger to each word as you read it. 

Many people develop a routine of reading aloud as part of their bedtime routine with children.  "Repeating the same actions each night lets your child know what to expect; it calms and soothes them and better prepares them for sleep." (ReadAloud.org)  Snuggle up with your little one and enjoy some great picture books.  Children often try to delay sleep by asking to hear more and more stories.  If you start out early enough, this is a good way to get them listening for longer and longer periods of time.  While they "pull one over" on you, you are teaching them to associate read-aloud time with the pleasures of togetherness with you.

In the Dark, Dark Night by Butler is a good title to read before the lights go off. While reading it, talk to your child about his or her fears of the dark and shadows. 

Children gain confidence and perseverance when they are certain that they know how to learn something.  To help children see how and when their learning occurs, adults can call attention to the learning as they observe it.  "When you draw a picture of your building, you are learning more." (Learning Together with Young Children: A Curriculum Framework for Reflective Teachers / Curtis and Carter) One strategy for helping children become aware of their learning is to create a book where their learnings are noted.  They can dictate their observations, or you can write your observations and read them to your child.

To introduce this idea to your child, read The Gingerbread Girl, because she is "one smart cookie."  After the reading, make a home-made book and entitle it the Smart Cookie Book.  Use the book to log learning that you observe or to take dictation to questions you ask your child.  "How did you get that tower to stay up so high?" "What were you thinking about when you..."  "Is there anything more you'd like to learn about...(whatever they were working on)."  Dictation helps build knowledge about print.

For some great ideas about making books, check out this website: Making Books with Children

Being able to hear and produce rhyming words is a stepping stone on the way to learning phonics.  Children must be able to discern the smaller units of sounds in words when they later try to "sound out words."  Reading and teaching young children nursery rhymes helps them to develop phonological awareness.  To learn more about phonological awareness read: Phonological awareness: instructional and assessment guidelines by David J. Chard and Shirley V. Dickson (1999) 

The great thing about the traditional nursery rhymes in The Neighborhood Mother Goose by Nina Crews is that it has contemporary photos of diverse children in urban settings acting out the rhymes. Free of the ethnocentric bias of many versions of Mother Goose, here preschoolers will see pictures of people like themselves, doing the things they like to do.