Books Rule!

By Billie Elias
August 10, 2009

Despite the onslaught of electronic toys and gadgets that “read” to your child (instead of books and games helping your child learn to read while they’re playing), learning to read will not be going out of fashion anytime soon. With most of America’s school children heading back to school next month, it’s time to dust off the books. Sadly, in our country 33% of all 4th graders cannot read at even a basic level, according to the 2007 National Center for Educational Statistics “Reading Report.”
 

What’s a parent to do?  Plenty!

In a read-aloud entry in  my parenting blog

I reported that the reading experts tell us that reading to your children is so important that even after they know how to read, we should still be reading to them!  Not only is it a cozy way to snuggle up and share precious moments with your child, but you’re sending the message that you value them:  they are important enough for you to break away from whatever adult task you were involved with to devote some time to just them.

It’s never too soon to get baby acclimated to sitting quietly for a few minutes, gradually building up to five or ten. Bedtime is another great time to read, but shouldn’t be the only time. You can start with fabric books or board books, textures that baby’s teething won’t instantly destroy. A couple suggestions for you to add to baby’s first library: Baby Bear’s Bedtime  Ladybug’s Lesson I also previously reported that since babies start learning language from birth, reading aloud exposes them to the sounds of human speech.  By the age of two, children know between 300-500 words. Children who are spoken to and read to frequently, have larger vocabularies and develop into better readers.

I have the fondest memories of a storybook that was read to me as a child.  My mother and father never seemed to tire of reading the same stories and poems over and over again.  The book happened to be an anthology of different writers, but the two-color illustrations that accompanied each story were indelibly written in my brain, along with some of my favorite stories.

I have yet to forget Mr. & Mrs. Apple naming their children after different types of apples (Jonathan, Winesap, Delicious, Baldwin) or of Mr. Apple going to the library to research the names as they added more and more children to their family.  There were Nina and Ted who looked forward each year to their winter vacation at their aunt and uncle’s home in Vermont where they tapped the trees for sap, turned it into maple syrup and ate it on their aunt’s delicious pancakes.  There was also Rosa-too-little, for that’s what they kept calling her until she could finally sign her name to get her very own library card.

These weren’t just stories; they were stories where I was learning something about my world.  Our local libraries have children’s librarians just waiting to help match you and your child with the ideal book, from picture book to non-fiction to chapter book.

For a beginning reader, you might choose an interactive book to encourage a love of reading.  “Ahoy, Pirate Pete” and “Once Upon a Time”  are almost magical, with picture pieces that are stored on each page that you change each time you read the story, creating a new tale with each re-reading.  “Dear Tooth Fairy” is another interactive book with small envelopes containing letters written by the Tooth Fairy to the little girl who refuses to leave her tooth under the pillow. Other early readers may experiment with word sounds like “bat, rat, cat, ratatattat” or “car, cat, cut, cot….bot, not, sot, rot, tot.”  I discuss this at length in banana-fana-fofana.

We know that children can understand books read aloud to them at several grade levels above their own reading level.  This serves to broaden their vocabulary at the same time as they are digesting more complex sentence structure.  A perfect book to read (and work on) together is “Puzzle Island.”  It’s a unique book that involves unscrambling letters to form the names of animals whose pictures are hidden deep within the book’s illustrations.  One important tip to having “quality time” together with your child is doing something that you also enjoy.

Sharon Duke Estroff writes some other suggestions for activities that will inspire kids to read:  help your child choose books appropriate to their reading level if they will be reading without you, bring books with you everywhere you go to reduce boredom, join a parent/child book club, read books of movies your child has seen, read from magazines written on topics of interest to your child, keep books in the car to use during traffic jams, listen to books on tape (and follow along).

 

Editor’s Note: Mrs. Elias, Independent Executive Manager of Discovery Toys contact: billietoy@gmail.com.

You can see some of educational toys at http://www.toysofdiscovery.com/.

You can see her blog at billiediscoverytoys.blogspot.com. Mrs is also follow her her Twitter, www.twitter.com/billietoy

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Source: Toys of Discovery