Read. Write. Thrive!

I took the two-year-old to his first  Toddler Story Time at the library, just as I took his sister and brother before him.

It has been a while since I had a toddler, nine years to be exact. Long enough to forget that two-year-olds don’t always sit patiently through every story, rhyme, and fingerplay. In fact, my little guy –one of two kids to attend on this blustery and snowy day–was at times more interested in heading out of the reading room and back to the kiddie computer than listening to a stranger read a book about the animals at the pond. He stood up several times while the librarian patiently read, grabbed my hand and said, “C’mon Mommy, let’s go out there.”

The librarian assured both me and the other mom present that our kids weren’t expected to sit in rapt attention, but she did her best to win it, even putting on some music and blowing bubbles.

The session is 20-minutes once a week, and we’ll be back again next week for Round 2.  The more kids attend these readings, the more they begin to enjoy the social practice of reading as a group activity. 

No matter what the age of your children, library storytimes teach them that books and reading are fun and any time you can prompt that, you are building the foundation for life-long readers. They also help develop listening skills and vocabulary, and social interaction skills.

I just saw a news-piece about the top passwords that people use to guard their access to their electronic accounts.

The fact that so many use PASSWORD, 123456, 654321, ABC123, not only demonstrates a disturbing  lack of concern for information security, but also a frightening lack of creativity.

While some are born with the “creativity gene,” it isn’t a trait exclusively determined by nature. Creativity, critical and analytical thinking can be encouraged and nurtured. The earlier we start, of course, the better.

Reading to your children and raising them to be readers develops creativity. Every story you share is a creation of a writer and illustrator who wanted to share his or her make-believe world. Over time, your child absorbs the notion that word and pictures are vehicles for creating and communicating.

Intereacting creatively with our children will also feed and seed  creativity, which could help us to not only lead more entertaining lives, but secure ones!

Here’s a primer:

• Adopt  the Miss Frizzle philosophy: I encourage my college-level writing students to “Take chances and make mistakes.”  Don’t be so quick to “correct” your child’s writing. Put grammar and mechanics on the backburner. Let them get their ideas out, let them develop their ideas, then make grammar a part of the polishing process.
• Make time: We overschedule ourselves and we overschedule our kids. Schedule in some free time for writng and the thinking that accompanies it. I tell my college students that writing is thinking on paper. I also tell them that learning to communicate well in writing is like learning to ride a bike–no one does it by reading the “how to ride a bike manual.” No one learns from a firm classroom lecture.  We observed, desired, and hopped on…and fell. Bike-riding is one risk that we all took with positive results. With time and practice, we gained confidence–some of us enough to ride  without our hands on the handle-bars, some enough to jump ramps and pop wheelies.
• Greet all your child’s writing and drawing positively. You don’t have to overdo it–In fact, you needn’t critique or evaluate it at all. Just acknowledge and appreciate what they’ve done, and make any observations you want to share.  Phrases like, “Wow, you really wrote a lot about this,” “I can tell you had your thinking cap on,” or “This is different from anything you’ve written before. What got you thinking about this?”
• Encourage creative problem solving: Asking your children what they might do in a situation is one way to sharpen this skill. This is a great game to play in the car, but its success hinges on your ability to put on your thinking cap and come up with some interesting scenarios.  Give them mazes–they require you to think “how do I get from HERE to THERE?”   When reading a book together, ask your kids how they might solve a problem the characters are dealing with. “What would you do differently? Why”?
• Model Creative Behavior: Sit down with your kids when they write, when they read, and when they paint, draw, and build…and participate.
• Play word games. Wordplay is creative thinking in practice. You can easily make time for a rhyming game with your toddler, and a “What if…” game with your middle-schooler. My kids always enjoyed “What would a day in the life of a __________be like? “
• Allow some privacy where needed: This is especially important for teen writers. Give them the tools and the time to journal, paint and draw on their own, but don’t push to see their work.

My first grade teacher, Miss Mary Bodi, spent a lot of time bringing out the writer in  her students. Regularly throughout the year, she asked us to choose a picture from a file. In it were magazine advertisements, clipped comics, and other images she’d collected.

One-by-one, were called to sit next to her at a table where we dictated a story that we thought the image depicted. She wrote the story down in a teacher’s perfect script, then at a later time, typed the short-short  stories and gave them back to us to paste onto jumbo pieces of construction paper.

We also wrote a caption or story to accompany every art project we did in the class, whether it was a handprint on a page,  the tissue-paper fall scene, or the cotton-ball snowman.  After each field trip, we drew a picture and wrote a memory. 

At the end of the year, we were rewarded with a two-inch thick book of our writing and illustrations. The book, though a little ragged and word at the edges, is a great grade-school memory. I’m so glad to have this evidence of early literacy that helped shape me as a young writer.

I’ve worked on a variation of this with my two older kids, though I’ve not yet bound them in book form.
The benefits: 

• Using images gives writers a starting point, which eliminates writer’s block. This is especially useful if you have a child who insists they “have nothing to write about.”
• Asking a writer to articulate visuals sets their analytical skills in motion. Like muscles, the more you strain them, the stronger they become.  Analysis is the crux of critical thinking, which the ability to engage in reflective and independent thinking. Interpreting images and communicating those interpretations is a stepping stone for analyzing ideas in the news and in our reading.  It is critical to active democratic citizenship.

You don’t have to carry this exercise to the publication stage—your children young and younger can still benefit from writing their own captions or short stories to accompany images that you clip from magazines,the funny pages,  or download and print from Google Images. The act of articulating an explanation and narrative to describe a scene can help your child develop story-telling, skills, and nurture creativity and imagination.

An alternative to clipping and writing that is especially beneficial to toddlers and preschoolers who may not be so eager to see their words in print, is to use scenes from picture books. Just flip to an illstration and ask your child what they think is happening. They are not only writing a scene, but exercising their pre-reading skills.

Miss Bodi made this a year-long project. With a limited scope, it is more likely that you would bind the work as a book. Some suggestions: Make this a holiday break or Summer break project.

If your writers-in-training resist sitting for a fifteen-minute jounal entry or other writing exercise, you might have some success weaning them into writing “a sentence a day.” 

 This can be done on a computer, or handwritten in a notebook. I prefer the latter, since flipping to the story will maintain the quick and easy nature of the activity.

You can start the story for them: The old standbys, Once upon a time, there was a __________….and It was a dark and stormy night… are good sparks.  Or the kids can choose their own topics and decide how they want to begin.

At the same time each day, they should add a sentence to the story, developing it over an unlimited period of time (Setting a deadline goal will affect creativity  and story development as the writer attempts to finish in a certain time frame).  As the story unfolds and they decide how it will progress, you may find that they add more than a single sentence at a time.

When the story is finished, you might do some cleanup—helping the author fix spelling and typos. Encourage your writers to type up and/or illustrate their stories, and bind them in simple paper or plastic folders you can purchase at an office-supply store, or create your own covers and bind them with yarn or ribbon.

With a story in hand, your child will be more likely to feel like a writer, which is a confidence builder.

Variations: Make it a group/family activity. Everyone can add a sentence-a-day to a single story.

This December, we read and enjoyed a couple of Christmas books this season with a similar theme–destroying a Christmas play. Both books focus on abhorent characters who display an offensive behavior or two or three, but while this will attract your young reader’s attention, he/she will absorb the overall positive lesson behind the tale.

The Best Christmas Pageant Ever–By Barbara Robinson

Though I’d never before read this gem, this is apparently widely recognized as a Christmas classic, as it was published in 1972 and even transformed into a family film in 1983. This timeless and timely book  is about a band of heathen children, the Herdmans, who cuss, fuss, steal,  and enjoy cigars. According to the wizened narrator, they are the worst children in “entire history of the world.” 

When these kids take roles in the church Christmas play just to get their hands on the refreshments, you can just imagine  the chaos that ensues. But instead of ruining the play, the Herdmans teach valuable lessons about the true meaning of Christmas.

What I loved most about this book was the writing–it is sharp, witty,  and full of surprises.  This is a must read!

 Reading level: ages 9-12. Paperback: 128 pages. Harper-Collins (June 6, 1997). Originally printed 1972.  ISBN-10-0064402754.  Source of review copy: purchase.

Horrid Henry’s Christmas–By Francesca Simon

We’d also never before picked up any of the misadventures of Horrid Henry, though he reminds us all quite a bit of Rotten Ralph, Jack Gantos’ rude and obnoxious cat that readers cannot help but love.

Horrid Henry is, putting it mildly,  a mischievous kid,  who ambushes Santa, wrecks a nativity scene, and topples the Christmas tree makes for holiday reading, all to the delight of readers who can’t possibly act out this way. Perhaps that is the endearing quality of these sorts of books–the character can do things that the reader cannot.   

This is entertaining reading, ripe with humor and  fun writing. My son breezed through this easy-to-read chapter book in a day, laughing as he turned the pages.

Info: Ages 7-10. Paperback: 112 pages. Sourcebooks/Jabberwocky (September 1, 2009)ISBN-10: 140221782X. Source of review copy: Publisher

When I talk about reading with my kids with other parents—-that is, either me or my husband sitting down with them to read aloud or share the reading duties—-I hear these responses like these: “I wish I could find the time to do that,” or “we’re just too busy to read.”

I understand completely. Between work, school and church activities, sports, and keeping up a home, it is easy to miss daily opportunities to squeeze one more thing in the schedule. While I admit that we are far from perfect, we do our best to find at least 15 minutes to spend with our kids and a book. That might mean dad reads with the 11-year-old before bed, and I with the toddler. It might mean the school-age child reads aloud while mom prepares dinner, or it may mean that dad sits on the floor with the baby and flips through picture books while simultaneously watching the evening news.

And sometimes we fail. Yesterday was one of those days. We spent the day raking leaves and cleaning house, and doing other work, and before we knew it, the trick-or-treat hour was upon us. We had dinner, watched Nightmare Before Christmas, and the kids conked out without any real reading. But, I don’t feel guilty; we’ll make up for lost time today.

_______________________________________________

Can you free up 15 minutes out of your day to read a picture book to your young children? Can you spare a quarter of an hour to listen to your older kids read a chapter or two from a novel?

Reading with your children does not have to take up a great deal of your time, nor effort. In the time it takes to watch an episode of Spongebob Squarepants, you could make a significant investment in your child’s future success, while at the same time, strengthening the family bond.

It is hard to see tangible returns when it comes to reading, but study upon study has proven that the amount of reading students do outside school is directly related to reading success in school (See a short-list of journal articles below).

Success in elementary and secondary school is the best predictor of achievement in college, which determines not only what career your child is capable of pursuing, but how secure he or she will be in that line of work.

Let’s consider the return on the investment in financial language, which isn’t too much of a stretch, since reading and school success directly relate to career. Let’s say that every minute of reading is equal to a $1 investment in your child’s future. So, 15 minutes a day earns $15 toward your child’s reading development. In a year’s time, your child’s reading skill grows by $5475.00. In 13 years, he or she will have amassed the ability and knowledge equivalent to $71, 175.00.

It’s not too late to start. Turn off the TV or video game for 15 minutes and pick up a book. Put cleaning, raking leaves, and errands on hold. Or just get ready for bed a little early tonight and end the day with a good book. Take turns reading the pages, or read aloud to all of your kids.

Daylight savings time gives us an extra hour today. How will you use it?

_____

Anderson, R.C., Wilson, P.T., & Fielding, L.G. (1988, Summer). Growth in Reading and How Children Spend Their Time Outside of School. Reading Research Quarterly, 23(3), 285–303.

Christianson SL, T. Rounds, D. Gorney. (1992)Family Factors and Student Achievement: An Avenue to Increase Student Success. School Psychology Quarterly.

De Jong P.F., Leseman P.P.M. Lasting effects of home literacy on reading achievement in school. (2001) Journal of School Psychology, 39 (5), pp. 389-414.

Heath, Shirley Brice. (1982 )What No Bedtime Story Means: Narrative Skills at home and School. Language in Society. 11(1). 49-76.

McCarthey, Sarah J. (Jan. – Feb., 200) Home: School Connections: A Review of the Literature. The Journal of Educational Research, Vol. 93, No. 3, New Discoveries in Literacy for the 21st Century), pp. 145-153

Imagine—celebrating thirteen days of Halloween instead of just one…As of this writing, there are precisely thirteen days remaining until All Hallows Eve, making this the perfect day to review The 13 Days of Halloween By Carol Greene, Illustrated by Tim Raglin

In this revision of the Christmas standard, The Twelve Days of Christmas, a charming ghoul showers his  gracious  “good friend”  with gifts of spooky, slimy,  and creepy creatures big and small: five cooked worms, four giggling ghosts, three fat toads, two hissing cats…and a vulture in a dead tree.

  On the thirteenth day, the ghoulish gal offers her suitor a box complete with bow, and herein lies the real magic in this book—you and your readers are prompted to guess just what she could have possibly given to him. My dad would have called this a cliffhanger. I call it an opportunity to exercise the creative muscles.

 This whimsically illustrated book is suggested for ages 4-8, but I handed it to my 11-year-old and asked him to read it and to share his thoughts. Without prompting, he sang his way through the pages—I suppose it can’t be helped; the Christmas song is firmly entrenched in the memory reels.

 He reached the last page—the cliffhanger—and sat there stumped. “I wonder what she would have given him. Can you guess?”  We spent quite a bit of time running through the possibilities—what had he not given her? “A pumpkin, no a jack-o-lantern! No something more scary…look at his face; he’s almost fearful! A zombie! A bloody hand! A brain! A beating heart.”  We decided upon the latter, reasoning that the suitor had, in fact, won the woman’s heart with all of his attention.

This has been added to our Halloween reading box, and will be a part of our holiday traditions.

We’ve got lots of books going — or we are about to get them going–at our house. Nothing escapes the necessity of multi-tasking in our wacky world, does it? Not even the relaxing practice of reading.
I can only imagine that Logan, our 5th grader, must have picked up the habit from me. I always [...]

While we wait for the first of the leaves to make their way to the ground, how about some seasonal reading, the kind that you can fall into to escape all the raking?  Here are my autumn favorites–Each makes creative use of language and is richly illustrated.These are books you can fall into as if they were piles of [...]

Today is International Talk Like A Pirate Day, started by John Baur and Mark Summers, aka Cap’n Slappy and Ol’ Chumbucket aka eight years ago.
Here’s a treasure chest of ideas for pirate-themed writing:

Ask your crew to make up their own pirate names and to describe what they look like, what adventures they’ve been on, what [...]