Parent are Their Child's First Teachers

In the quiet moment before a story begins, you're already doing something remarkable.

Every time you open a book with your child — every voice you use as you read, every question you ask, every page you turn together — you are building something that will last

far longer than the story itself.

Read to your child with expression.

You're building a relationship with a precious younger human that can influence their life forever. The memories you make with a child will stay with them long after they've outgrown these pages.

The Painting Penguin book is more than a story about a penguin who loves to paint. It's full of color words and action words, up and down, here and there — the small building blocks of language that layer together to become reading. But the real magic isn't in any single word. It's in the reading itself: your voice, your patience, your presence, even the joy your child senses you feel as you read the book to them. It's taking what appears to be a simple story and recognizing the real depth of what is happening and possible with that story.

Children don't just learn to read from books — they learn to love reading from the people who read to them. So point at the pictures. Ask, “What do you think happens next?” Let your child finish a sentence, guess a rhyme, or “read” the pictures back to you long before they can read a single word. Let siblings and friends read to one another, too — as there's a special kind of magic when a child becomes someone else's storyteller.

You don't need to get it perfect. You just need to show up, again and again, book after book.

That simple consistency tells a child: you matter, time with you matters, and the world is worth exploring.

What you model for your child today may become what they model for their own children one day. The way you read, the patience you show, the closeness you create in these small moments — this is how the love of a story, and of one another, is passed down through a family.

So settle in. Turn the page. And know that in this small, ordinary moment, you are doing something extraordinary — creating a reader, inspiring a curious mind, and raising a child who knows, without question, that they are loved.

With gratitude for the time you give. It is time well spent.

Jeanne