There are numerous ways to share books with your little one. Your reading skills do not have to be top notch. Just the one-on-one time alongside your little one is making a difference to them. The closeness and sharing of stories will pay off for years to come.

You want to try and read to your little one every day. You need to radiate an excitement about reading a story together so that your child thinks of reading as fun. There are a few ways to make reading fun. You can talk or sing about the pictures in the book. You don’t have to read it word for word. Occasionally it is more intriguing to add your own twist to a story. Talk about your own relatives or friends and add their names to the story.

Ask questions about the pictures in the book. Let your little one create their own take on the story. They may see the pictures speaking to them a bit differently than what the words depict. This will open up a vast dialogue and a chance for you to elaborate on things in the pictures and assist your child in discovering the world we live in.

Show your children the cover of the book and let them recite to you what they believe the book is about. If they are too young to do so, point out certain items in the pictures to help them learn the names of the characters that might be in the pages that follow.

Let your little one turn the pages of the book for you. This will help them interact with the book and get familiar with how books are laid out.

Children have a short attention span, so don’t get discouraged if they lose interest before you are finished reading the book.

Remember to have fun with reading, and your child will pick up on this positive reinforcement of reading.

Related posts

• Is Posting Children’s Pictures Online Dangerous? (0)
• Helping Kids Become Good Readers (0)
• Determining Your Baby Shower Guest List (0)
• Child Safety – How To Use “Code Words” Effectively (0)
• Baby Shower Favors: Ideas And Tips For Making The Right (0)

Today, children are more interested in television, video games and chatting on the Internet than they are in reading. Many parents probably would say, in fact, that getting a child to pick up a book is a significant challenge.

According to statistics from the U.S. Department of Education, children spend an average of four to six hours daily watching TV or movies. That doesn’t mean, however, that screen time has to be wasted time. Parents can use TV programs and movies to their advantage – and actually get their children to like reading.

SFK Media Specially for Kids Corp., for instance, has developed a way to help children improve their reading, vocabulary and comprehension skills by watching movies. Reading Movies, part of SFK Media’s ReadEnt learning system, use a technology called “Action Captions” that makes each word appear on the screen as it is spoken.

The words appear out of the mouths of the speakers in real-time, with no disruption to the flow of the movie. These Action Captions are believed to activate the cognitive elements of the brain so that the development of both reading and spoken language skills takes place naturally.

The idea behind Reading Movies is that kids will develop their reading skills effortlessly – without even knowing it.

“When I first put the Reading Movies in, my kids sat down in front of the TV to view it and I was in awe,” said Annetta Jones, an educator and reading specialist in Florida. “They became so caught up in the entertaining action of the movie that they did not even realize that they were reading out loud.”

Reading Movies are based on such timeless classics as “The Trojan Horse,” “20,000 Leagues Under the Sea” and “Tales of Gulliver’s Travels.”

The movies have proven to help children at all reading levels reinforce vocabulary and related concepts, according to SFK Media. In fact, a single interactive Reading Movie can be used again and again over a period of years to develop different sets of skills.

“With this program, I see a world where parents might say, ‘Stop hanging around playing, go and watch a movie; you need to improve your reading,’” said Ronald Brown, professor of cognitive psychology at the University of Sunderland in England.

Related posts

• Help Your Child Learn to Read (0)
• Lay the Groundwork for A Lifetime of Reading (0)
• Simple yet Effective Ways to Sharpen Memory in Children (0)
• Preparing your child cognitively to read (0)
• Plan Ahead For Kindergarten Registration (0)

Help your kids improve their reading skills?
Grow their vocabulary?
Help them sit quietly (willingly!)? and
Entertain them too?

Easy- Play audiobooks!

That’s right Mom and Dad, listening to books on tape provide all these benefits and more.

Did you know that for a significant part of their childhood, your kids’ intelluctual capacity will be greater than their reading ability? That means that they can understand material when it is read aloud to them that they would not be able to read. Interesting isn’t it?

My kids love audiobooks and I love that they love them. As a homeschooling Mom of 4 kids, I do a lot of reading aloud. Audiobooks give my voice a little break.

You can play books on tape when you’re in the car running errands. Naptime and bedtime are also favorite times to listen to a story. (And if your kids are like mine, you wear out long before they do so books on tape are a lifesaver for helping them nod off after you’ve done the bedtime story!)

Listening to audio books strengthens your child’s ability to listen, a skill very crucial for their academic achievement.

Audio books also let your child hear fluent reading with a bit of flair… a lot of them are read by the author or professional actors.

If your child is struggling with reading, audio books associate reading with pleasure…so important if your child is to develop a lifelong love of reading!

Audio books help your child learn to visualize a story by using their imagination instead of the pictures (in contrast, watching television trains the brain to be lazy and rely on
images).

Why not get your child on the fast track to reading success with the push of the play button too? To get you started, here are some of my kids’ favorite titles:

Charlotte’s Web (read by the Author, E.B. White)

The Jamie Lee Curtis collection (And I dare you to get through “Tell me about the night I was born” without crying!)

A New Coat for Anna
The Maurice Sendak collection
The B.F.G. by Roald Dahl

Have fun listening together!

Related posts

• Keeping kids active: Ideas for parents (0)
• Audio Books – Every Parents Dream Come True (0)
• Parents, Kids And Time Alone (0)
• Music And Your Childs Development (0)
• Mom’s Guide To Keeping Kids Safe Online (0)