There are so many benefits to reading with children…
But it can be difficult to keep a group of children engaged! Here are a few ways to make your story times more likely to bring children in and offer them the benefits that books can bring.
- Choose high quality literature. If you’re bored reading it, they’ll be bored listening. Look for interesting illustrations, distinctive characters, fun rhythm and rhyme, and relatable elements.
- Keep the books that get a good response, and shelve the ones that don’t capture their interest yet. Rotate books out when they’re getting stale and keep trying.
- Use your local library to keep an active rotation and try out new authors, illustrators, and genres. Plus, children’s librarians may have suggestions for books to read next.
- Books belong everywhere. Yes, a bookshelf or basket of books is important for children to have access to, but keep books about physics and great buildings with the blocks, keep books about plants in a waterproof box outside, and keep cookbooks with your play kitchen.
- Story time isn’t a set time— it’s whenever someone wants to read! Allowing children to engage with books when they’re interested and ready, and children who are allowed to freely choose when to listen to a story will enjoy them more. Plus, you can’t always tell who’s paying attention just based on where their body is– plenty of educators have heard a child across the room join in the chorus of a story.
- The last page isn’t a finish line: The goal is to engage children in the text. Whether that means dropping a book that the children aren’t interested in, or talking with them for 5 or 10 minutes about a single page, remember that it isn’t a race to the end. When children are asking questions or going off on tangents related to the subject or relating the story to their own experiences, they are internalizing the richness of text and its use as a tool for communication and connection.
What’s your favorite book to read with a group of children?
Language development is the process by which children acquire the ability to communicate verbally (or signed) and in writing. This begins in utero when the fetus is able to hear patterns of sounds, and continues through crying, vocalizing, babbling, and mimicking, into words, sentences, and eventually writing. Bilingual or multilingual development occurs when a child is consistently exposed to and using more than one language at once.
Read books to infants while you are holding them on your lap or be sure he/she can see the book. Any book with pictures will do, but board books work well for infants who often want to grab the pages or put the book in their mouth. Read for as long as the infant seems interested and don’t worry if you don’t make it all the way through the book. Allow the infant to touch and hold the book and read the same books many times. As infants gain more motor control allow them to turn the pages.
For a list of books by age click here.
Goal: To begin supporting infant’s language development and book knowledge.
Dr. Katie Paciga, Fred Rogers Fellow and Assistant Professor of Education, shares some things to consider when choosing e-books or storytelling apps.
When looking for e-books consider if there are different types of menu options such as “read to me”, “read and play”, “read by myself” which will offer flexibility for different ages and reading levels. Print tracking is another option that is excellent for emergent or beginning readers to draw attention to the words as they are being read. Check to see that any interactive elements relate to the story line and aren’t arbitrary, such that they draw attention away from the story or cause confusion. An option to record narration of the story can also be great for supporting children’s creativity.
Features of storytelling apps that are important to look for include the option to import images from the camera roll and the ability to use the keyboard or a finger for adding writing/text. The option to audio record so that the story can be told by the child’s voice rather than only by printed or written text makes a storytelling app more appropriate for a broad range of ages.