Happy Belated New Year

As if things weren't busy enough around here, then come the holidays! It was a great month. Things are settling back into a routine. We got a lot of WONDERFUL new books for gifts. My son loves non-fiction and he got some books with bright, colorful photo illustrations. DK readers, National Geographic and Eyewitness books are all winners with my boy. He can find an illustration that interests him and read about it. He is a very visual learner, so this type of book is right up his alley.

He enjoys chapter books if we read together, but when he reads on his own, he will more often pick up one of these books, a Lego magazine, Ask or Appleseeds magazine. All of which, in my opinion, are great choices. I'm amazed at the things he knows from his reading. He would not learn as much reading novels, even though novels are my idea of fun reading. To each their own!

On a sad note, my daughter turned 5, so she received her last Imagination Library book. This program has delivered a much anticipated book to our mailbox every month for FREE thanks to Dolly Parton, our local United Way, and many more sponsors. It is available for all children in our United Way service area from birth until their fifth birthday. We have loved this program and graduation is bittersweet. I will have to look for a quality magazine subscription to take its place. We have enjoyed the Cricket family of magazines for their high quality publication that is completely free of advertising.

If you are struggling with a young reader in this new year, maybe you need to find materials your reader enjoys. Or maybe one of these tips will help you: 12 Best of 2012. Happy 2013!

Comprehension strategies

I hear so many great things about Pinterest, but haven't joined. I just got on to look at what's out there today and found this cute video to demonstrate comprehension strategies of monitor, clarify and reread. I decided to share it here. As parents, we have the luxury of being able to work one-on-one with our children, enjoying a good book together. This gives us the opportunity to be detectives. What areas does your child need to improve? Do they need more sight words in their vocabulary? Are there certain sound combinations that are giving them trouble? Are they struggling with fluency? Without fluency it is difficult to hold concepts in memory and achieve comprehension or understanding. Reading programs can be helpful, especially in classrooms when you have many children to teach and can't sit down individually as much as you would like. But they cannot replace one-on-one time reading and enjoying books. This is also why classroom teachers utilize guided reading or small group reading so they can focus on each child, hear them read at their own reading level, and intervene exactly where they need help most in the moment. Maybe these comprehension strategies are what your child needs most. If not, there's always Pinterest :)

Updated to add: I should have used these strategies myself today. If it sounds too good to be true (monitor), it probably is. I should have clarified and carefully reread that recipe a little sooner to realize that my meat needed to cook for 50 minutes PER POUND, not just 50 minutes. Looks like it's tuna for dinner tonight. On the the plus side, dinner is figured out for tomorrow night, which never happens because I am obviously not much of a planner.

Bee Gee

This morning my son was reading aloud to me from the Star Wars Craft book I had picked up at the library (that book could be an art curriculum for an entire school year) and he got to a step that included "Bee Gee" fabric. Hmmm... I thought... quickly ruling out the idea of 60s rock band patterned fabric, I realized he meant BEIGE! Oh, yes, good old beige. We've had to drill this new word all morning, as he'd obviously been reading it wrong to himself for a while. This reinforced to me the idea of having your child read aloud to you or to their siblings while you are listening, even when they are fluent readers and it seems easy enough to let them read silently to themselves. And proves once again that sounding out, while helpful, has its limitations.

Dictionary skills can come in very handy when children get to higher reading levels. When they are reading more complex texts, they will encounter difficult words that are unfamiliar. A lot of online dictionaries even have an audio pronunciation that you can listen to if the dictionary symbols are difficult. Reading is a great way to expand vocabularies at a higher reading level because books and news articles often use words that are not used in ordinary conversation.

Here is a handy resource if you'd like to know more about phonemic awareness (knowing the sounds that are made by combinations of letters). There are 26 letters in the English language, but check out this list of sounds. http://www.edalive.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/09/BTRS-Phonemic-Foundation.pdf

But My Kid Doesn't Sit Still

"My kid doesn't sit still." If there is a most common excuse for why parents don't read with their kids, this has got to be it. Especially in the toddler years, many children really don't sit still for long.  I was blessed with a "sitter" in my oldest, which probably helped him learn to read earlier. There is nothing that will absorb him more than sitting and reading, except maybe watching tv. My daughter is a mover! I understand the challenge this brings. If she isn't moving, she is sleeping. But she still loves her books. I even found her one afternoon listening to her Tag Reader while standing on her head!

So what do we do with those movers and shakers to get them to love reading? Look for books that include movement! I suggest "Mrs. Wishy Washy," "On Mother's Lap," or baby's first chapter book, "More More More Said the Baby." For the older set, "Jonathan and His Mommy" and Dr. Seuss's "Can You Do It?" are great for more challenging movements. If the book you are reading doesn't have movement in it, be creative in making ways to inject it yourself. Books with flaps or things to touch are often a hit with active children. Or look for books of fingerplays (like Itsy Bitsy Spider) or large motor games to do with your child.

It's also extremely important to seize those rare, often short, windows of opportunity when your active child is quiet and cuddly. With some it's at bedtime or first thing in the morning when they're still a little sleepy. My kids have often brought me books while I'm cooking dinner for some strange reason - maybe because sometimes it works :) Bedtime stories can be tricky with our daughter. When she is really tired, she gets squirmy. If she isn't sitting nicely to listen to stories, then it is time to go to sleep. I figure that is a good strategy to either get her to sit still longer or to know for sure it's bedtime. Other parents of busy kids have used snack time in the high chair to get them to attend to a story. Snacks in hand, whether on the couch or in a high chair, often help children sit still a little longer. Books work great in the car since they need to be buckled in anyway. Audio books are a lot of fun for preschoolers to follow along and turn the pages, helping them feel independent as readers while you concentrate on the road.

The idea behind getting the little busy bodies to sit still and enjoy reading is the hope that they will find reading materials they enjoy and choose to read as they get older. With plenty of activity to balance reading time, turning the pages of a book can enthrall their tired bodies as much as other quiet hobbies. It will also help them get a jump start to success in reading so that it will be more enjoyable later.