Gimmicks

How do you feel about gimmicks? Gimmicks are often thought of as low quality, fleeting, trendy or even evil. On the other hand, the rules of the natural world and the growth of our bodies and minds are real and lasting. When these two forces collide, it can be incredibly powerful. Case in point:

National Geographic Angry Birds

I can't tell you how long my dear son spent looking at these books in Barnes and Noble yesterday and he didn't even think he learned anything despite the fact that these books are full of information about animal identification, habitat, geography and behavior. Thankfully, our local library has several books from this series in circulation. I will definitely be recommending it to gift givers this holiday season.

I am generally not a fan of gimmicks, but when used well, they can be great tools for helping children build important skills. I recommend that you check out trendy books and see if they meet your standards. You may be pleasantly surprised!

Always time for reading

My kids didn't win any prizes with their summer reading programs. They never turned in enough time sheets. But they certainly spent time reading! I treasure the moments when they are sitting side by side behind the couch with my son encouraging his sister to try new words. It sounds something like, "Do you want to be a teenager and not be able to read this?" I get a good chuckle out of his frustrations and appreciate his overall patience and honest encouragement. I'm often frustrated myself by having to pick up mountains of books for the thousandth time. Or when I need to say, "This really is the last one," my arms loaded with library books. On those busy days, when I need to be working on something or when we can't mess up the house because we just finished cleaning it, we turn to our trusty friends, books. I'm thankful for them. They are always waiting there on the shelf with plenty of time for us, even on the busiest of days.

Still here, reading

I hope you are enjoying the summer that finally arrived in my neck of the woods, where we call it our "neck of the woods." Summer is one of my favorite times for reading, probably stemming from a childhood of school vacations that allow for seemingly endless, uninterrupted hours to get lost in a good book. With all the summer activities available my kids, I have to be careful to guard their uninterrupted reading time. This week, after an especially fruitful trip to the library, during which I stumbled upon a chapter book entitled "Bug Boy," my son spent a solid three hours finishing the book cover to cover! (If you know my son, he plans to be an entomologist when he grows up, so this work of fiction about a boy who can turn into a bug was right up his alley.) If you have a Bug Boy or Bug Girl in your family, they may be interested in these titles by Carol Sonenklar. Or they may like a non-fiction book about bugs, which my son would typically read.

I also like summer for all the summer reading programs available. My kids can earn a free book at Barnes and Noble. They enter to win prizes at the local library. I'm sure there are many other summer reading programs that people could share in the comments. Incentive programs are wonderful, especially when they recognize the value of time spent listening to an adult read as equal to the time spent reading independently. Incentives can be just the ticket to get a reluctant reader motivated to put in the time necessary to discover a love for reading. But parents beware: incentives programs can just as easily squelch a spark of love that is ready to leap into a flame. If we make reading about an external goal and not about the enjoyment of the act of reading, we may be defeating the purpose. Two reading programs is really more than my kids want to do. They read a ton, but need reminders to fill in their time sheets and recording titles. And I'm okay with that. It means they get the point - reading is fun!

Books for taking turns

We just discovered a new series of easy reader books. Bear with me if you've already heard of them because they've obviously been around a while, but they are new to me. And they are fabulous! The series is We Both Read. Check out their website or search "we both read" on your library's search engine. These books have a parent's page on the left and a child's page on the right. They come in a range of levels.

The wonderful part about these books is how well they are written! The parent's page includes rich new vocabulary words for young readers. It helps the story move along for the youngster with a short attention span (the series includes non-fiction titles for your boys non-fiction fans). The child's page uses common sight words. Some new words are introduced on the parent's page, then repeated often on the child's pages. The child's page also includes short passages with larger print. And yet (here is the tricky part), the text is still well written, matching the flow of the story.

We had so much fun with The Frog Prince last night that I absolutely had to share! It really kept my daughter motivated to continue reading even though she was tired and it was hard work. I kept saying, "We can put in a bookmark and finish tomorrow." But she dug deep and continued on. That's the sign of a good book!

I have come across other books that utilize this same concept in the past, but I find they are not usually well-written, enjoyable books to read. We will definitely be trying more books from this series. I noticed some of the books listed on the website (the "Elephant and Piggie" series and "You Read to Me, I'll Read to You") were also books I would recommend as fun for taking turns reading. Please add any additional suggestions in the comments! Happy Reading!

Finding information

Why do you read? Reading has many purposes. We often have opportunities to model for our children reading for pleasure and for information. It is wonderful to see our children start to pick up books for fun. It is all the more exciting when they pick up books to find information.

There are innumerable ways we rely on reading for information. Looking up a new bug or finding a favorite recipe are examples. In our testing this week, there was a section about using resources like an atlas, dictionary, or index to search for desired information. Thankfully our family enjoys hunting for information, so this was a fairly easy section. As a side note, there was sure a lot of reading in the test, even in the math section.

My five-year-old confirmed again today that we start practicing information gathering skills from an early age at our house. She was doing an activity in her princess magazine. It was a list of four true and false questions. She brought it to me completed, proudly telling me she got all the answers right! I was in awe! The sentences were complicated and, while she has been surprising me with her rapidly growing reading proficiency, I couldn't believe she had actually read them! Then she confessed, "I didn't read them. I just circled random answers and then checked in the back. And I got them all right!" Way to use your resources, girl!

Classics

I enjoyed this short article from Reading Rainbow about the value of teaching children classic literature. I would expand on it to include that children also learn patterns in storytelling from classic literature. Many of the old fairy tales have been remixed and new versions appear or appear in other forms from countries around the world. There are Cinderella tales from many cultures. What a rich learning experience for children to compare and contrast these tales. It builds higher order thinking skills when you look for things that are the same and different between these stories. Then go one step further and write or tell your own version of a classic tale.

Books are always being written and new classics are born. I wouldn't be surprised if Horton's Miraculous Mechanisms is one of these. This is my son's favorite book this week. When he reads seven chapters in the middle of the night, I know the book is a winner!

What are your favorite classics? What new books do you predict will become classics? Add your thoughts in the comments!

Pattern and prediction

For those very beginning readers, books with patterns are great! I was reading the Mercer Mayer classic, "Just Go To Bed" with my five-year-old this afternoon. I really pushed her reading skills today. Two things that we relied on heavily during our reading was pattern and prediction. On each new page we first studied the illustrations. Looking to see what was happening in the pictures gave us a great head start to figuring out the words. Another big help was the repetition in the book. We would look back to find where we had read a word before to help us. (She has been known to do this on her own. We've been playing Draw Something, a smartphone app which is like Pictionary, and she went to find her Click magazine to find how to spell "nose" because she remembered she could find it there! How resourceful!) Between these two strategies and  her base knowledge of phonics, she did great and was very proud.

Another fun strategy that I used when she started to get frustrated was using humor and word play. At one point the character dressed as a "bunny." When sounding out "bunny," I suggested funny things. I don't hesitate to use bathroom humor, so "butt" is not off limits :) That lightened the mood and gave her a spurt of energy to try reading a little longer. When we focus on prediction and making sense of what we are reading, we reinforce reading for understanding. Isn't that the ultimate goal?

(Note: I actually have a post from YESTERDAY, too! :) Go me!)