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Category: Reading

  • Just Add Snow Day “Specials” Pt. 3

    Just Add Snow Day “Specials” Pt. 3

    Just Add Snow Day

    Just Add Snow-Day Specials– Books to Read and Read-aloud

    When the winter months seem to put a damper on your homeschool, breaking up your days with a sprinkling of “Snow-Day Specials” can be just the cure! Transform your family’s cabin fever by creating cozy-day fun with favorite books to read and read-aloud. Here are just a handful of my family’s favorite books to curl up with, along with some ways to add some “Wow!” 

    Littles

    In part 1 of this series I suggested building a blanket fort as a way to add some “Wow” to your day. A blanket fort, or “bear cave” for those days that were made for hibernating, is a perfect place for littles and not-so-littles to curl up with their favorite books. Fill with comfy pillows, stuffed friends, a flashlight, and join your child in some serious snuggling time with some of these winter’s day favorites for little ones:

    • The Snowy Day by Ezra Jack Keats
    • The Biggest, Best Snowman by Margery Cuyler
    • The Mitten by Jan Brett.
    • Bear Snores On by Karma Wilson
    • Blizzard by John Rocco

    Not-so-Littles

    For children who are school-aged, dreary afternoons can be broken up by expanding on the stories they are reading or listening to, after and even during the story.

    Some favorites for early elementary aged children include:

    • The My First Little House Books series, including, Winter Days in the Big Woods, Sugar Snow, and Winter on the Farm. Older elementary students will love reading or listening to Laura Ingalls Wilder’s original Little House on the Prairie As a fun extension, take a winter field trip to a local farm! Everyone visits farms in the summer or fall, but find out if your children can visit a farm in winter to note the differences.
    • The Little House Cookbook: Frontier Foods from Laura Ingalls Wilder’s Classic Stories by Barbara M. Walker is another great extension for all ages to enjoy together. Have your children look through the book to cook up some afternoon treats based on the stories they are reading!
    • A Bear Called Paddington by Michael Bond is best read after cooking up some homemade biscuits or scones with your children and enjoying with some of Paddington’s favorite marmalade, along with tea in special cups.
    • Popper’s Penguins by Richard and Florence Atwater can be read aloud while children listening design their own special penguin homes, castles or towers using sugar cubes or mini marshmallows and glue.
    • Charlie and the Chocolate Factory by Roald Dahl. A favorite activity for younger siblings as well is to make homemade play dough and then add in cocoa powder. The chocolate-scented play dough provides the perfect catalyst for children to act out their own chocolate factory and come up with some crazy fun inventions! (*I save all the boxes from Valentine’s Day chocolates to pull out for days like this, and the children love filling them with their own chocolate-dough creations!)

    Middles and More

    While the entire family may enjoy hearing these enchanting tales read aloud, olders can share in with the reading or help set up the perfect bookish afternoon. Make up hot chocolate (add whip cream for extra yum-factor!) Light a candle or two and read by candlelight. Set out art supplies: drawing paper, markers, colored pencils, or paints—many children enjoy creating scenes or even maps from read-alouds with different mediums as they listen. Some may create interpretations with Legos! In our home, we call it “active listening.” Here are a few picks to get you started:

    • The Chronicles of Narnia series by C.S. Lewis
    • The Green Ember series by S.D. Smith’s
    • The Giver by Lois Lowry
    • The Incorrigible Children of Ashton Place: Book 1 The Mysterious Howling by Maryrose Wood
    • The Penderwicks by Jeanne Birdsall (a timeless classic perfect for ALL ages!)
    • The Wingfeather Saga series by Andrew Peterson

    Venture to your local library and grab some of these favorites, perfect for any day—but ESPECIALLY a Snow Day! Happy homeschooling!

  • Making the Jump: From Learning to Read to Reading to Learn

    By Lauren Bailes, Aim Academy English Teacher

    Lauren BailesI don’t remember quite when it happened. At one point, I was reading phonics books about dogs, boys, hats, and bats. Making meaning from even these simple words was laborious. There was just so much for my mind to hang on to — the long and short vowels, what characters were doing and saying, when certain letters were silent or pronounced. I vividly remember sitting on my mom’s lap in the living room as she read A Cricket in Times Square aloud. I followed along as best as I could but the words were complex and beyond my ken. Even more overwhelmingly, these complex words wove themselves into an even more complex story. My mom’s voice was the only thing that kept the story alive because, independently, I couldn’t have put those moving pieces together in a way that made sense.

     

    Then, after a few more chapters of Cricket and a few more phonics books (anyone remember Mr. G-H?), those same moving pieces started operating on their own. Words I had previously struggled to assemble became recognizable on sight. Stories and information came to the fore as the work of reading became as natural as breathing or walking. Books became magic instead of work. Characters could now do so much more than jog or swing; they could ambulate, deceive, wonder, and vindicate.

     

    We all love that moment when readers take off. Seemingly overnight, they go from sounding out words syllable by syllable to taking in whole chapters and whole stories in one gulp. They emerge from the library arms full of chapter books or their favorite series. Or – get ready – they start making their own selections on your Amazon Prime account…

     

    This is a gratifying time for homeschool parents and for their blooming readers. But is there anything we can do to help this process along? There certainly is.

     

    Parents help young readers jump from learning to read to reading to learn by providing two opportunities: volume and choice. Lay a solid foundation by providing  your kids with vast and interesting choices of what to read – from narrative nonfiction to how-to books, from classic fairy tales to short stories bursting with vignettes of puzzling characters and everything in between. In this broad array of reading material is an important point for your readers to grasp: the knowledge adults share in common can be found in print. And reading is the key to access those mysteries. Secondly, kids need time to read every day: at least an hour of uninterrupted, unstructured leisure time when reading is what everyone in your family makes it a priority to do.

    Now that my homeschool days are a distant memory, it is the long and luxurious time I spent with my nose in a book, surrounded by my brothers and mom doing the same, I remember best.

    [Part 2 — How to Help Your Child Read for Inference–will be posted Monday.]

    Lauren is a homeschool graduate and an award-winning literacy teacher. She holds an M.A. in literacy from Columbia University and is currently a Ph.D. candidate at Ohio State University. Lauren is offering the following classes for Aim Academy:

    Course  (grade) Teacher Optional Live Class Discussions* EST Register
    Middle School Tools: Writing(6th-8th) Lauren Bailes 1st sem. Fri 1-2 PM EST Register
     Middle School Tools: Reading Comprehension(6th-8th) Lauren Bailes 1st sem. Fri 11-12 PM EST  Register
    Pre-AP English (9th-12th) Lauren Bailes Fri 3-4 PM EST Register

     

  • Safe Landing: Reading for Inference after Making the Jump

    Part II by Lauren Bailes, Aim Academy English Teacher

    (Part I discussed the value of the development jump, when readers go from learning to read to reading to learn. Find it here.)

    It’s easy to watch children begin their trajectory as emerging readers, but shaping that trajectory is just as important.  Until about 3rd grade (8 to 10 years old), children generally focus on doing reading, like I did as I read about Sam and his bat. They sound out words, tap out syllables, make sense of strings of words, recognize organizational structures like lists and paragraphs, and hold multiple narrative episodes in their heads in order to enjoy all of the exploits of Horrible Harry or Laura Ingalls Wilder. But after this point, there’s a shift in the activity of the brain during reading – one that we want to watch for very closely. Kids move from doing reading to learning other things through reading. They can answer their own questions, generate their own research interests, and deepen their knowledge by accessing worlds of information in books. The reading itself has become instinctual.

    Such a shift in the student brings an additional set of responsibilities for parents. We need to model and assess a new set of skills. No longer is the focus on merely decoding sound combinations or word meanings – kids must move on to deducing and inferential reading. If children are proficient, voracious readers (two essential prerequisites for inferential reading), they need to be coached into a transformed way of thinking about books and stories.

    When we talk to our children about books, let’s move away from retelling questions and move toward critical thinking questions. Here are some of my favorites for fiction and nonfiction:

    Fiction:

    – What does this character want most? What’s getting in the way?

    – How would the character behave or speak differently if this other character were not in the book?

    – Where do you see characters feeling confusion or conflict about their own choices?

    – What is the turning point in the story? Are there lots of smaller turning points?

    – What lesson does each character learn at the turning point?

    Nonfiction:

    – How is this text organized or ordered? Why do you think the author made that choice?

    – What information do you already know that helps you understand this new information better?

    – Is there new vocabulary in this text? How does the author help you understand what it means and how to use it?

    – What is the most important information in this section you think the author wants you to know? How can you tell?

     

    There are endless variations and extensions for each of these questions. The important thing is to teach our emerging readers to raise and answer questions while reading so that deducing becomes as instinctive and exciting as decoding.

    Lauren is a homeschool graduate and an award-winning literacy teacher. She holds an M.A. in literacy from Columbia University and is currently a Ph.D. candidate at Ohio State University. Lauren is offering the following classes for Aim Academy:

    Course  (grade) Teacher Optional Live Class Discussions* EST Register
    Middle School Tools: Writing(6th-8th) Lauren Bailes 1st sem. Fri 1-2 PM EST Register
    Middle School Tools: Reading Comprehension(6th-8th) Lauren Bailes 1st sem. Fri 11-12 PM EST Register
    Pre-AP English (9th-12th) Lauren Bailes Fri 3-4 PM EST Register

  • Help! My Child’s A Late Reader

    The magic of reading is part brain development and part environment. You can’t do much about the first — that’s a timeline God controls — but you certainly can about the latter.

    Kids will learn to read if they invest time in reading. The more they read, the better they will read. Your role is to help them want to do that. Our mistake is in thinking the reading program we choose is the secret ingredient. Not so. Curiosity is. Kids have to want to know what is hidden in those pages to persist in decoding the secret system.

    Here are four things you can do to stir up desire:

    1.Keep the context of reading pleasurable. We learn more when we are happy and relaxed.  As soon as we experience stress, our cognitive powers decrease.  We lose our ability to take in the full context, and instead, just focus on the threat. Further, emotions triggered in a stressful situation create a powerful memory that will be triggered again when the same context arises. If your child repeatedly finds reading stressful and demoralizing, those negative emotions will come rushing back at the beginning of the reading time and further complicate the process. Summertime, when school is officially out or at a more relaxed pace, is a good time to create a different reading memory for your late reader. Create a reading nook or an outdoor hiding place where books are a part of the setting. Share reading with your child, cozy up together and make reading an expression of your love and affection.

    2.Talk about books you love. Readers are raised by readers. My own childhood memories are soaked with not just my mother reading a book, but my grandmother as well. At 80, my mom is still a voracious reader who always has a book to recommend to me and her four granddaughters.  Reading is a central part of our family life, from generation to generation.  Start talking up your own reading habit. Make trips to the library or bookstore part of your family night. When traveling, track down the best used bookstore in town and give everyone a couple of dollars to splurge on books.  Share your finds with each other. If your kids see reading as an adult activity, they will be motivated to want to mimic that.

    3.Listen to a recorded book together. Nothing like a professional narrator to bring the characters inside a classic novel to life. It is a mistake to think listening to a book on tape will undermine your child’s desire to learn to read. No, it will exponentially boost that curiosity and desire to know what’s inside other books. You are creating an appetite for books when you pull the world of words into your child’s daily life any which way you can.

    4.Become a wordsmith. There are a number of skills that expert readers possess. A rich vocabulary is one of them. But don’t turn this into another dreaded subject. Rather, cultivate familiarity with words — big and small  –through wordplay, Scrabble, crossword puzzles, and dictionary games. Keep big dictionaries and thesauri within reach. Talk about words. Notice when the same word appears in different contexts. Use online resources, such as Word-Origins.com, to track down the fascinating history of words.

    Your turn.  What’s working at your house?