Why Should I Read ABC Books and Nursery Rhymes To My Child?

Reading Rockets, http://www.readingrockets.com/ , is an excellent resource site for information about early literacy and other topics relating to reading. It is one my favorite sites to visit on the web.
I recently read several articles on the Reading Rockets site about phonemes. They define it and highlight the importance of phonemes :

• A phoneme is the meaning of a letter or digraph; the "mouth move" signaled by the letter .
• The spelling of a word - its letter sequence - is a map of the pronounciation - its phoneme sequence.
• To learn to read words, we have to understand this mapping.
  
  I think this information helps us understand the importance of helping our children acquire phonemes. What can I do to help my child? The response is easy and ready available for you- continue to read and expose your child to ABC books and Nursery Rhymes. When you repeatedly read this type of early literature that focuses on letter sounds, your child is hearing the sounds - oral language - and they internalize it. Over time they learn to combine these sounds that create phonemic sequences.
  
  A perfect example of this is my recent experience this week while I was substitue teaching for three days in a first grade class. The children were very engaged during writer's workshop. They were writing their own stories and so willing to read them to me. When I looked at their writings, of course, the words were not spelled correctly - and to my delight, they read them back knowing what these words were because they were using phonemic mapping. The reason they knew phonemic mapping was from early literacy experiences: learning sounds that when sequentially pieced together constructed the words they needed to write. There is great satisfaction on the part of the students, teachers and parents to see these positive results and students enthusiastic about writing!
  
  My message to you - keep reading ABC books and Nursery Rhymes!

Susan