Reading Can Be Fun: Library Time

Reading Can Be Fun! Have you ever thought of your area Library as a great spot for parent/child fun time? Library Time can open up many possible books for you to explore together. It's a great way to introduce your child to how many different story and picture books there are. You can dive into colorful books designed specifically for early children, and while there, show your child a few books you might share together in the future.

You might go to the early books and say "We can pick 2 books from this shelf today. Let's look and see which ones we want to take home with us." Help your child look at a few pages of any books that catch the eye. Most children's sections have reading areas, where you can sit together cuddly close for a test reading of a page or two.

Then show your child what number of books you can take each time and how you have to check them out at the front desk. Also mention you need to take very good care of the books because they belong to the library, and you will be returning them in 2 weeks (or whatever time frame your library has).

The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) has made a clear statement about young children spending a lot of time in front of electronic screens: TVs, computers, movies in the car or at home, even hand held devices. "The AAP strongly discourages television viewing for children ages two years old or younger, and encourages interactive play. For older children, the Academy advises no more than one to two hours per day of educational, nonviolent programs, supervised by parents or another responsible adult chosen by the parents."

An alternative to screen time, is real interaction. Screen experiences actually act against a child learning skills for real life. Parents, older siblings and care providers model actions and attitudes that early children mimic, word for word, gesture for gesture. If Dad loves to wear his sun glasses, his little child may love to wear them too. If mom reads a book, then her child will mimic reading even before they understand how to read. Human children learn real-time behavior from human beings.

Let's make a point to turn off the TV and movies that amuse our children as temporary diversions, and make it a regular practice to have reading time together. When you can have an outing, make a regular plan to go to the Library together. Remember to pick out something for yourself too. If you don't have a lot of time to read yourself, remember short stories, and books of inspirational sayings. Poetry comes in all flavors and most poetry books have many short poems, perfect for a quick mental break.

Also many public libraries are near children's play parks, so some physical activity can be planned into the library adventure as well. Remember, Reading Can Be Fun for a lifetime!

Share Early Literacy Time to Increase Needed Learning Skills

Parents need to understand, the neural pathways needed for literacy and lifelong learning skills are ideally created by positive experiences from active-infant stage through early pre-K stage. This is a narrow four-year period before kindergarten. Later remedial literacy efforts are difficult because the needed neural network is not present in the child's brain.

This underscores the point that education starts in the home. Even parents who do not consider themselves to be qualified to be their child's first teacher can learn basic picture-book-reading techniques in time . Years of early reading experience before kindergarten make for reading and school readiness.

Dana Foundation researched Neuroeducation: Learning, Arts and the Brain (120 pages), an intersection of cognitive neuroscience, the arts and learning. http://bit.ly/4ovu3r (1.47MB HTML). This study supports early picture book reading and other arts exposure to develop essential neural pathways for lifelong learning skills. Mariale Hardiman, Janet Eilber, Susan Magsamery, Guy McKhann all looked into the effects of early arts education on aspects of cognition and learning.

The children without earlier lap reading time with parents, have been the study at least one Kindergarten remedial project. A kindly visiting adult reader can help establish some social skills and learning skills in children who have been acting out in frustration. The premise of this study was the children were acting out because they never had the nurture relating to positive learning "reading can be fun".

These children had felt left out of the fun that other children seemed to have with books, and assumed the school experience was hostile for them. This project did help smooth out the frustration. Though they may never catch up with the 50% of agemates with the earlier fun/reading start, they felt better about themselves. Someone was finally showing them what they were missing. This project is exceptionally enlightened and not the norm across the board.

This second window of remedial adult/child reading interaction is closed by age 8 years. If an at-risk child does not experience some kind of intervention by then, the child remains 2 years behind agemates throughout school and is 3 to 4 times more likely to drop out of high school before graduation. In the vernacular, they feel like "the cards are stacked against them".

The social fallout of the currently escalating drop out rate is increased crime, increased unemployment rates, increased population in prisons, increased public expenses, increased need for taxes, decreased national productivity and quality of life. For these reasons economists are saying the best investment anyone can make to strengthen our society is in early literacy, arts and health intervention in ages birth through age 5 years.

In one such program currently done in Minnesota, home visitors coach parents on effective early literacy techniques and health issues for the first 3 years. Then for parents who co-operated with that phase, funding is made available sufficient to provide highest possible pre-kindergarten education. This program creates children with kindergarten readiness equal to the most privileged child.

There are several online mom groups who encourage the value of moms work loving and raising their children and create mom interest groups . Picture book reading and family charity to disadvantaged families are two topics of these groups. We salute www.themotherhood.com and www.extraordinarymommy.com.