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Fostering a Love of Reading
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Summer Reading and Writing: Make It A Challenge!
May 21, 2011 — 2 Comments
As the summer months come closer, kids in school are getting excited about the freedoms from school schedules! Parents across the country are looking into camps and extra curricular activities to keep their youngsters busy, but there are also fun ways to encourage their literacy learning at home!
Make your child’s reading and writing success a challenge over the summer. Encourage their success by offering points for every book/article/magazine they read and added bonus points for any writing response they do. Make sure you require them to do at least 1 to 3 writing responses a week ensuring that they are stretching their comprehension and keeping up with their spelling and writing skills. After they acquire a certain number of points (20-50) they can cash them in for rewards.
Some fun ideas for rewards are:
- Watch the movie version of the story your child read. Curl up together (probably with a yummy bowl of popcorn) and enjoy! Discuss the book&movie similarities/differences when it’s over.
- Sweet treats are always nice: ice cream, popsicles or even watermelon wedges are all fun to have on a hot day!
- New books! For every 10 books your child reads, they can take a trip to the book store to get another one. What a great way to encourage their reading interest!
Keep us posted on your fun family challenges, and check with your local libraries for reading challenges in your community!!
Fun With Summer Reading!
May 15, 2011
It’s already time to start thinking about all the fun things you can do with literacy activities over your summer vacation! During these months there are many books to read, activities to do and literacy skills to build on. It’s a fact that many children regress with their skills over the summer months. To keep up with their literacy learning, reading and comprehension activities are key to their success! There are tons of engaging ways to keep your kids busy and learning as well as resources you can use in your own community. Here are some simple yet important things to keep in mind:
- READ! I know we say it always but books and stories of fact and fiction make great summer and travel companions. Both children and adults can learn from sharing their e-books, books on CD, traditional stories and love for reading. Bring your books with you and share them at home, on vacation, in the car, on a plane or a boat. Bring your books here and there and everywhere!
- Play Games: board games, memory games, made up games and comprehension games all help with literacy learning! Kids today spend a lot of time playing games on the computer, which can help with skill retention. However, games with a hands-on experience provide children of all ages the opportunity to problem solve and learn from one another!
- WRITE! Don’t forget to keep writing! Allow your kids to dictate, use story starters to create their own tales, and review their books to share with others. Staying in touch with writing skills is also key in maintaining their literacy learning.
Have fun organizing your summer reading and literacy activities! Keep us posted on any summer reading success!
5 Ways to Make Reading Fun at Home!
April 10, 2011
Sometimes all it takes to make reading fun is some imagination and a change of scenery! Check out these suggestions to help create an atmosphere for literacy development and bring the fun back into reading with your kids!
1. Secret Hideout: Make a Fort Reading Environment a Special Place to Read
What child hasn’t built a fort at one time or another? If you don’t already have a fort in your house or outside in the yard, help your child create one. It can a blanket fort, a plywood fort outside, a tree house, or even a simple under the bunk bed fort. (Just make sure you both can fit…being able to get out once you’ve gotten in is helpful too!) Bring your child’s favorite reading book, get comfortable and read away. This can also end up translating to a“reading corner”. After the fort fun is over, you can have your child pick a spot to be a cozy place to curl up and read!
3. Picture Detective: Predict the Plot through Illustrations
Have your child do a picture walk! Flip through a book and look at all the pictures and have your child tell you what he/she thinks is going to happen in the story. Read the story and see how close he/she did.
4. Pop-up word: Make One Word a Physical Game
Pick one word that your child particularly has a hard time with and every time your child reads that word, both of you stand up. This will help him/her remember the word because an action is associated with it. This works particularly well with kinesthetic learners. (A child who wants to move all the time and likes to touch and feel everything.)
5. Highlight Heaven!
Grab an older book and a highlighter and have your child highlight every word one the page that he/she can read. After all the words your child knows are highlighted on the page, take a moment and have your child look and see how many words he/she can actually read. This is quite a confidence booster.
Flashlight Reading: Or Even Under the Covers
Before your child is too tired at the end of the day, take some time and read in dark room. Take a flashlight with you and read the book by flashlight. Little kids especially like this one!
Let us know the ways you have made reading fun at home!
Literacy Program Development at School: How Parents Can Help
April 3, 2011
Parents often think that teaching literacy has to be a formal activity, but it’s the accumulation of the little things that parents already do naturally that makes the difference: singing songs, telling stories and getting involved at your child’s school.
When considering how to improve your school’s literacy program, talk to your teacher or principal about the ideas below and learn how you can best get involved.
Just Read
At school, volunteer to come in for story-time. You may share several books a night with your child, but not all families have the luxury of time to do so. In fact, fewer than half of families with kindergarten-age children read to them on a daily basis, which makes reading at school that much more important. And when you are at home, National PTA recommends reading with your child for 30 minutes every day. As s/he gets older and begins to read more on his own, continue to bond over books by asking him questions about his latest favorite.
Talk It Up
Prefer to make up your own tales rather than read from the page? Great! Telling children stories about travel or a cultural tradition automatically exposes them to different words and concepts. So arrange a time when you can come to the class to talk about your job, where you come from, a trip you just took , anything. It’s helpful to bring a prop to help spark discussion and focus the kids’ attention. But don’t feel pressured to make your presentation fancy. Simply listening to and conversing with a new grown-up is beneficial for kids.
Share Books
Make a list of your family’s favorite books and encourage other parents in the class to do the same. You can share lists and then start an informal book swap.
Dedicate a section at your school’s book fair to new and gently used books donated by parents and available at no cost (one or two per family, depending on supply).
Liven up the Library
If you notice that the media selection at the school library doesn’t match the diversity of the school or community, hold a fund-raiser to drum up money for new titles. You might also work with your PTA to hold a book drive to build the school’s collection or to share with local families.
Let us know how you stay involved in your child’s literacy program at school!
Jump into Reading!
March 22, 2011
Did anyone ever tell you you had an active child? Do your kids express themselves with physical movement? When considering if the kinesthetic learning style applies to your children, know that the development of gross motor skills occurs on the same side of the brain as the linguistic skills and fostering both is important for language acquisition.
I often mesh pre-reading skills with movement in my classroom. Young children are always in need of gross motor activities to help them stay focused on more academic tasks. So, during our meeting times or even in small group work, we move our bodies to the rhythm of language.
Here’s some easy ways you can keep your child engaged in reading kills by using their bodies!!
*Clap out letters in a word! Use their name first and then move on to 3 letter words like: CAT, HAT, PIG, and DIG
*Clap out words in a sentence! This is great for beginning readers and helps to define sentence structure. Again, start with simple sentences like: The cat sat. The girl jumped. The boy ran.
*Jump out letters and sentences! You can even write the letters and words on large cards and jump next to them when you say/read them aloud!!
Enjoy the different ways that children can learn to read and remember, when kids move their bodies around it helps them stay focused on the many challenging tasks of reading!
Springtime Science Fosters Literacy Development
March 14, 2011
March is here and kids in school begin to feel the spring fever! In my classroom this is always the time of year for transition as the children say goodbye to cold winter days and hello to warm spring evenings. We always turn our focus to our science center as the days get longer and the trees and plants come back to life with new growth.
Using science to build on language and literacy skills is one of the best ways to make vocabulary development hands-on for kids. Here’s some objects to have in your science centers this time of year that allow children to stay connected to their living environments:
Keep your eyes peeled for the first signs of spring and as soon as you see buds popping open to leaves, pick one or two for the children to observe with magnifying glasses. Make sure to record children’s observations!
Plant and sprout different types seeds in your classroom. Allow children to observe the growth process and have them record their findings in a journal.
Put soil in your touch table or in bins for children to feel. Talk about the difference between sand and soil. Explain the importance of the nutrients that soil provides to growing plants and trees. Record descriptive words that the children say about how the soil feels to them!
Let us know what you are doing in your classrooms this spring!
The Toddler and the App
February 23, 2011
One of the great things about the iPhone and iPad is how easy it is to use. You can give it to a 2.5-year-old or a 100-year-old, and they can pick up the features and nuances almost immediately. The iPhone and iPad have become the go-to toy for toddlers!
At MeeGenius, we are always looking for new opportunities to make education fun and entertaining. We have recently partnered with So Smart! to publish their Baby’s First-Word Stories. These books not only read to your children but provide them with beautiful illustrations that are simple yet share with them the details of everyday tasks in their lives. In addition to MeeGenius, there are some awesome apps out there to entertain your toddler.
While we love the iPhone and iPad, we must also consider toddlers’ exposure to these devices. According to the American Academy of Pediatrics, children under the age of two should not be exposed to television and other screens as their brains are sensitive to color and sound. For toddlers over the age of two, it is recommended not to expose them for over 2 hours per day.
Enjoy So Smart! and let us know what apps you enjoy!
Sing Your Way To Reading Success!
February 2, 2011
Does singing simple songs boost linguistic intelligence or language development?
As a preschool teacher for many years and a new mom singing my days away, I truly believe that, yes, singing and language skills are interconnected. The patterns of words, rhymes, rhythms and tonal qualities inherent in songs are incorporated easily and naturally by children as they learn to speak and, eventually, to read.
Singing together provides a joyful way to expand your child’s spoken vocabulary and creates a strong bond. One of the greatest ways to encourage literacy is simply to talk to your kids, singing takes this to the next level.
Songs and books are both sequences of events, and so singing provides fundamental skills kids use in school. As your child starts to explore sounds and put them in order, she is engaged in a developmental behavior critical not only in musical development but also in pre-reading skills.
Here are some tips on how to use songs and singing in everyday life, making music a joyful part of emerging literacy:
- Make up silly songs about everyday activities, like brushing teeth, getting dressed, or cleaning up. Use a familiar melody or invent your own.
- Explore your family’s roots and traditions when looking for songs to sing.
- Go to the library to find books based on songs (e.g. There Was an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Fly, Baby Beluga, Old McDonald), and/or music CD’s based on books — then go home and sing them together.
- Have grandma or grandpa make a recording using our personalized option at MeeGenius.com of a favorite book to read to your child. Preschoolers are fascinated by the sound of their voices, and this provides a memorable connection around music!
What’s In A Name?
January 22, 2011
There’s a good chance that a child’s first experience with reading and learning to look at print has to do with the child’s own name. Children who are connecting print to themselves begin to notice print in their environment.
As a preschool teacher for many years, I often have parents come and ask me if I have taught the children how to write their names or how to read letters. My usual response is, “We have their name printed in as many places as we can, that way the children can use their name as an important resource in learning to read.“
Most young children build a sort of network of understanding around their names that help them figure out words, sequencing of letters, meaning of words, the direction of written word, that other words start or end like their name and even that words can be put together to make a message.
Make your child’s experience with learning letters authentic by connecting written language to his or her name. Print their name in a large block letter font on a name card or half a sheet of 8.5×11 paper and include a photograph of the child. You can use this name card for many pre-literacy activities including letter/sound recognition practice and writing skills and the more you use it in the child’s environment, the more they will recognize the same letters in new places!
Rhyme Rhyme All the Time!
January 12, 2011
Why is knowing the sounds in words so important for literacy learning? In English and in many other languages, there is a close relationship between the sounds we speak and the ways in which they are represented in written symbols. There is a natural human tendency to enjoy the sounds of language. For example, people delight in poetic alliteration and we enjoy rhyme and rhythm. When young children hear rhyming sounds they usually can’t help but chime in with their own rhyming words.
By using rhyme to support children’s playful interest in language learning, parents and teachers can use the natural enjoyment of poetry and song to help children pay close attention to how language sounds.
As children learn to read and write, understanding the sound-letter relationship is key, and this understanding begins the oral language experiences. Encourage your young children to rhyme openly. Start by modeling it for them and soon enough they will catch on. You can even record their rhymes and collect them together to build a foundation for writing poetry! Some wonderful authors who are known for their poetry and rhyme are: Dr. Suess, Margaret Wise Brown and good old Mother Goose!
