Summertime and reading go together like ice cream and a cone
August 6, 2015
Summer time reading liberates reading from the long list of assignments that often accompany reading during the school year.
The tyranny of the assignment—
Read for 20 minutes
Keep a journal of your reading
Answer these questions
Write a book report—
Assignments so often rob the pleasure
out of reading.
Lets hear it for—
Read whatever you choose and like
Reread a favorite book. You get to revisit a book you loved. You get to love it all over again.
You now bring more to that reading experience so you get so much more out of the book.
There is absolutely nothing you have to do, other than read for pleasure. There are no assignments lurking that asks you to prove how much you understood the book.
There is no one saying you are not a fast enough reader
There is no one saying you are not reading challenging enough books
There is no one saying there is no purpose in rereading a book.
You know the story.
When we look at all the messages adults give children that suck all the pleasure out
of the reading experience, it should come as no surprise that reading for pleasure is going by the wayside for too many children.
Replace those messages with—
Read what you want
Read what you choose
Read to get lost in a story
Read to meet new people and go new places
Finish a book and immediately begin to read it again—you are not yet ready
to leave the story.
Parents face a challenge to overcome the ubiquitous presence of screen technology.
July 27, 2015
A recent article in the WSJ The Great Gifts of Reading Aloud was a nice wake-up call about the importance of reading aloud to children. It made me think what a daunting challenge parents face today to overcome the ubiquitous presence of screen technology. A dad recently shared with me his personal experience of reading […]
Talk to your baby.
July 16, 2015
A recent article, Brain exercises for your baby, highlights how talking to babies helps them learn and develops their brain. Studies show that the vocabulary a child learns in the first three years of their life directly affects their future IQ. Babies best learn vocabulary inside face-to-face conversations, not from screen technology. But, just as […]
What you have in common with Tolstoy
July 8, 2015
Looking for the right word, the words that will best express what you want to say or write? You are not alone. The great writer Tolstoy often found himself in a similar predicament. His solution might prove helpful Nabokov, a Scholar of Russian Literature in addition to being a great novelist, said this about Tolstoy’s […]
