Read to your Toddler!

Reading with Toddlers

1. Read favorite stories again and again.
2. Get your little one actively involved in telling the story.
3. Ask questions that invite more than a yes or no answer - "What is this thing called?" "Oh, I wonder what she is doing?"
4. Summarize the book if it has too many words, or just talk about the pictures. Most toddlers books have no plot so it's not necessary to read from cover to cover.
5. Give your child access to books. Choosing what she would like to look at and learning to turn the pages is part of early literacy.

What Toddlers like in Books

1. Small books to fit small hands
2. Books with simple rhymes
3. Books with familiar items - shoes, toys, pets
4. Books with familiar routines - bedtime, bath time, meals
5. Lift the flap books
6. Books with very few words or with repeating words - books little ones can learn by heart
7. Goodnight books for bedtime

READ, READ, READ!

Happy Holidays!

10 creative uses for those Christmas cards!
Don't throw your Christmas cards away! Get creative with your children by recycling your christmas cards. Here are some ideas:

1. Make little Christmas boxes for next year. You will find the instructions here (but beware, this is addictive!). These work particularly well as little gift boxes on a Christmas table, with a tiny present for each guest tucked inside. Make 24 boxes for an advent calendar for the kids, filling each box with chocolates!
2. Cut shapes out of the cards in matching pairs. Hearts work nicely, as do simple Christmas tree shapes and even plain squares and circles. Stick the cards back to back and laminate them, then punch a hole in them and use to make a colourful and child-friendly mobile or “string” to decorate next year. You could add to this every year. As a variation, you could back each shape with a plain-coloured piece of card or construction paper and write on it the date and name of the person who sent the card.
3. A traditional activity, but one which never fails to amuse the kids, is making gift tags for next year's presents. Use pinking sheers, a hole punch, and leftover ribbon.
4. Make gift bags for next year by saving smart paper bags. Cut a nice shape out of each card and stick it to the front of the bag (covering any shop labels if necessary). Add a little ribbon bow just above the card and wrap your present in tissue paper before putting it into the bag. This looks lovely with brown paper bags and tartan ribbons.
5. Some designs can be cut and folded into miniature Christmas cards for the kids to give next year, or for decorating the dolls house.
6. Scan your favourite cards into the computer – and some of your favourite messages from inside the cards as well – and make them into a Christmas wallpaper or screensaver with a photo program. Children love this and it is a great memento if you do it each year.
7. Cut out the pictures on the larger cards, punch holes around the edges with a hole punch, add a shoelace or brightly coloured wool (with sticky tape wrapped around the ends) and you have a cheerful and cheap lacing card for little ones. If they are particularly popular you could laminate them to make them last longer.
8. Make some Christmas confetti to use next year. Use either a plain hole punch or a special Christmas one (both together look great) and choose the most colourful areas from each card to cut. Gold and silver looks very effective, especially mixed in with red and green. small scraps of left-over wrapping paper can be used too. You can keep the children busy with this for hours! The confetti is useful on New Year's Eve, too.

Read a good christmas story to your children!

Grand Rapids Area Library January Calendar

The Grand Rapids Area Library posts a monthly calendar on it's Web site. Follow this link for the January calendar.

Ready-to-Use Read Aloud Activities for the Family

The best way to get children excited about reading is to read WITH them ... the younger the better. As they get older, it will be important for kids to see YOU reading, too. Here are some ideas to get you started:

• Make reading a DAILY experience. When a child is very young, it is the sound of your voice, not the words that they love. Reading with a child (even before they are born) helps you and your child bond. discover new things, and create precious memories, TOGETHER.


• Create a Family Reading Night. You have a Family Game Night, why not Family Book Night? There are lots of ways to make reading together a lot of fun.


• Build Reading into an Activity Your Kid Loves. Ideas: Read the directions to a game you are playing outloud, When you're watching TV, turn on the subtitles function. It's an easy, non-threatening way to match something they want (TV) with something you want (reading). "You get used to the subtitles very quickly and it is a big help."


• Plan a family adventure to the library. Kids love adventures, so get them involved. Make plans together, to prepare for and then celebrate the first trip to the library. Plan a book party when you get home? Be sure to prepare the kids BEFORE you go. The library is a unique place, and you'll need to take the time to explain how a library works, just as you explain the dos and don'ts of other places, like church and visiting family and friends.


• Mirror Classroom Processes at Home. Reading, like walking, is a skill that is learned, with lots of practice. The more we practice, the more skilled we become. If you can complement the work your child is doing at school, you can maximize his/her learning.


• Give Your Child Confidence to Read. Recognizing the letters on a page is only one part of reading. The more crucial part is having the confidence to keep trying, and to learn new words so we can understand what they mean. We learn language by hearing the SPOKEN word, learning to read can be encouraged that same way.


• Pick some Award-winning books to read together. Parents, teachers, and librarians can readily find award-winning material that can encourage a child's love of reading. While the Newbery and Caldecott Medals are the most widely recognized awards for children's literature, they are by no means the only "premier" awards for children's books. Anyone interested in finding the best of children's literature can find an award winner in any given genre, for any given age.
  

Lake Country Power Grant Received

We received work that Project READ will receive grant dollars from Lake Country Power's Operation Round Up to support the FRED event in Cohasset this winter. Thanks to Kari Gjerdi for her work in writing the grant. A big thank you to Minnesota Reading Corp member Teresa Greniger and Principal Sean Martinson for their work in organizing the event. And a big thank you to Lake Country Power for their support.

Watch for details.

FRED Books

A big thank-you to Kari Gjerdi & the Minnesota Reading Corp for the delivery of two big boxes of NEW Chapter Books for our upcoming FRED (Fathers Reading Every Day) events. With at least three events including children in the elementary schools, it is great to be able to offer chapter books to our usual collection of picture books. The books are high quality and will be greatly appreciated in our schools.

Watch this post for more details.

Literacy Begins at Home: A Letter for Parents

Dear Parents:
Reading aloud to your child can be one of your best parenting experiences! We hope that you and your child create many loving memories as you explore children's books together.
Here are some tips from LiteracyConnections.com

1. Don't wait until you think your child is "old enough" to be read to. You both can enjoy this experience sooner than you think--well before your child's first birthday.


2. Make reading aloud a daily habit! It's a wonderful routine to help your child prepare for bedtime. Like all habits, this one may take a while to get established, but hang in there until it's a daily (or nightly) routine.


3. Try to select an enjoyable core of books your child can choose from. Do they have bright, colorful pictures? Does the language flow in an enjoyable way as you read it, or does it sound unnatural and halting? Are the stories about topics your child might be interested in?


4. Remember to keep it fun! Try to allow your child to select the books to be read. Yes, it's hard to read a book for the umpteenth time (We've been there!) but your child will gain a lot from these repeated readings--both emotionally and in preparation for his or her own reading development.


5. Previewing books with your children is part of the fun! Look at the pictures and talk about them. As you chat about the pictures, you prepare your children to enjoy the book, and you can explain some words or names they will hear when you begin reading.


6. This is an experience that you can really "get into." Roar like a lion, squeak like a mouse, and read your stories with great feeling!


7. You'll want to be physically close to your child as you share books together. One of the best parts about reading aloud is having your child sit on your lap, or snuggled up to you.


8. An enjoyable alternative to reading aloud can be the stories that you tell yourself! Your children will enjoy the tall tales you make up, or the family stories that you remember. But be sure to read books or tell a story EVERY DAY!


9. Your children will probably want you to continue reading to them long after they are capable of doing it independently--because reading aloud isn't just about reading. It's a warm, loving experience that we hope that you'll continue for as long as your child desires.
   

Friday Fun Day Activity

It is Friday and Friday's are for fun. Now that we have snow on the ground take some time to play outdoors with your child or do a fun indoor snow activity.

This adorable snow family will give your kids hours of puppet time fun! All you need are some inexpensive knit gloves and a few simple supplies to put together this cute project.

What you'll need:

• 1 white knit glove
• Hot glue gun
• 4 tiny orange pom poms
• Small pom poms for ear muffs and hat
• Chenille stem pieces
• Scrap material
• Scrap felt for scarves
• Black acrylic paint
• Paint brush
• White felt
• Scissors
• Plastic wrap

How to make it:

1. Fill fingers of glove with plastic wrap. This will keep the glove from sticking to itself from the glue and will act as a “filled finger” which allows for a good fit when done.
2. Glue on chenille stems and pom poms for ear muffs.
3. Use a triangle shaped scrap of felt to form a simple hat. Wrap the wide piece around the bottom and fold down the point to the back, then glue in place. Glue a pom pom on top.
4. Use scrap material to make a wrap around shawl. Simply glue the center of a long strip of material to the top of the “head”, then wrap around and glue in place. Trim ends if needed.
5. Make scarves from felt strips, fringing the ends with scissors. Glue in place.
6. Glue orange pom poms on for noses.
7. Dip the handle end of a small paint brush into black acrylic paint. Carefully dot on eyes and mouths. (Practice this step on the thumb first if you plan to discard it the way that we did).
8. Allow everything to dry, then trim off the bottom of the glove and the thumb.
9. Glue a 1” wide strip of white felt around the bottom to keep it from fraying.
10. Carefully remove the plastic wrap from the fingers.
11. Put on hand and have a fun puppet show!

Tips:
Knit gloves are inexpensive (sometimes as low as 50 cents per pair) and can be found at dollar stores, drug stores, grocery stores and discount department stores.
If you have tiny black pom poms they can be used in place of paint for the eyes and mouths. You can also practice with a black Sharpie marker.
be careful when using hot glue guns because the hot glue can hurt little hands. Always supervise or handle the gun yourself while children position the materials. White craft glue can be used instead, but takes a lot longer to dry.

Guys Read Web site

From the Guys Read web site:

"Research shows that boys are having trouble reading, and that boys are getting worse at reading. No one is quite sure why. Some of the reasons are biological. Some of the reasons are sociological.

But the good news is that research also shows that boys will read — if they are given reading that interests them.

So the biggest part of this site is the collection of book titles. These are books that guys have told us they like.

Our idea is to help guys become readers by helping them find texts they want to read.
Get in there and start looking around. There is a little something for everyone."

Check them out at: http://www.guysread.com/