Value Bookshop’s Reading Notes

When should you prepare your child for school? Believe it or not, the preparation starts the day they are born. A child’s home life and environment is the biggest determinant of a child’s success in school. You can increase your child’s potential for educational success by just reading aloud to them on a regular basis. It is important that you fill your house with books and literacy materials.

However, building a library of books, magazine subscriptions, encyclopedias and dictionaries can cost you and arm and a leg. Here are some ideas how you can create a home library on a limited budget.

1. You should begin the process of building a home library even before your baby is born. Baby showers is a wonderful place to begin. Don’t keep your friends or family wondering what baby gift they should get. Speak up and let them know your intention of building a home library. Board books are the best for baby’s early years. They are sturdy and will survive rough handling.
2. Throughout your child’s growing years, birthdays and holidays such as Christmas are also opportunities to add books to the home library. Family and friends usually like to buy toys for children. Remind them that books are also appreciated.
3. Look out for book sales held by neighborhood, school and main branch libraries, colleges and universities. They usually advertise sale locations and times in the events column of your newspaper. You can often purchase used books at these
   sales for as little as 50cents. This is a great way to load up on fiction, non-fiction books, information and reference books. Don’t be afraid to buy used encyclopedias. Even if it’s 10 years old, much of the information is still pertinent.
4. It is normal practice that the tooth fairy leaves money under the pillow. Why not consider having the tooth fairy leave a fun, entertaining paperback or comic book instead. Paperback books are fairly inexpensive.
5. Regarding magazine subscriptions, borrow first a few back issues from the library to see if your child is interested in it. You could also talk to friends and family to see if they are interested in trading magazines. This way, each family can subscribe to different magazines, thus allowing for a wider variety. Also, check out student subscription discounts. Many magazines offer special rates if ordered through schools.

A special note for Malaysians:

• Malaysian book companies usually hold their sales at the end of the year. Pay Less Books have sales a few times a year. Their children books are usually 50% off. Put yourself on their mailing list to receive sale notifications.
• If your child is attending kindergarten, check to see if they participate in Grolier’s Scholastic Book Club. They distribute their book catalogue only through schools and the books are greatly discounted.
• Be a patron of http://www.valuebookshop.com. Parents are usually tied up with work and other commitments that don’t allow them to go bargain hunting for books. Value Bookshop does the bargain hunting for you. Shop online in your pyjamas. It’s convenient plus you can trust to find wonderful children books at cheap prices.

Surround your children with books and read with them regularly. Your home environment is very important to their future success. Don’t neglect it.

Do you have a child that you know is very smart but seem to have problems when it comes to formal learning? Medically you know there is nothing wrong. So, what is going on?

I asked a dear friend of mine who has spent many years in childhood education to share her experience with us. I believe all parents should OPEN THEIR EARS AND HEARTS to her message as usually, parents are contributors to their child’s learning problem. My friend’s name is Poh Lin and she currently teaches from her home. She is especially good at working with children who are not motivated to learn. Parents usually turn to her whenever other “tuition” options can’t solve their child’s learning problem. I will give you more of her profile when she finally decides to write one for me

Below is her answer to this question of mine:
“Based on your experience, what kind of learning problems do you encounter?”

ANSWER:
I believe that home, environment and parental influence play an important part. What I am sharing here is my own personal experiences.

Generally, children with learning problems fall into these 3 categories: (Please note we are referring to normal, healthy young children. Medically, there is nothing wrong with them.)

• Age Factor or Readiness
  Nowadays parents are pushing their young children to school as early as 2 years old and to tuition centres or language centres as young as 3 years. They claim that they can do wonders and miracles to these innocent children who are still sucking thumbs, wearing diapers or still drinking milk from the bottles. No doubt, I agree exposure is important but you can do as much wonders at home spending quality time with your own children eg: playing, talking, reading, taking the child out to the park, just spending time… etc….. Every child progress at a different rate and every child will learn when they are ready.
• Short Attention Span
  This is getting common nowadays. Examples of short attention span for normal children: can’t sit still for long, fidgety, restless, easily bored, lack of focus, unmotivated, can only handle one short story at a time or a short activity at a time. One of the main factor I commonly observed is that children as young as babies are put in front of the “square box” (TV) while the maid or babysitter or mommy is busy. Most young children are kept entertained by the “square box” nowadays.
  They have no problem in retelling all the stories or movies they’ve watched from the TV or from the cinemas. They have no problem re-enacting as Transformer, Spiderman or as Gabriella from High School Musical or Barbie, but if you ask them to sit for one hour to do reading and writing, believe me it’s a HUGE challenge for some of these children. Some of these children even have problem sitting down for storytelling.

  I have a student that I am currently teaching. A very typical story nowadays. She is the only child in the family. She is very bright and intelligent. She can express herself very well in English. I believe she will score distinction for her storytelling and very dramatic as well. She was sent to me because she can’t read and write that well. She was only five then. After working and observing her for a short period, I realized that her problem was this:

  First, she doesn’t have a “big” problem.
  Second, she is just like any other normal child who just likes to play and has lots of imagination.
  Third, she has many thoughts running at the same time in her mind.

  She enjoys art and craft. She loves TV shows, movies and music. That is her main form of entertainment. To her reading from storybooks and writing may not be as exciting as watching “The Bee or High School Musical or Happy Feet”. Now how do I compete with this?



• Temporary Shut Down of the Brain
  The child is normal and smart but is bored with the same routine e.g. too much drilling of the same thing. The same story of starting school at an early age, lack of creativity, lack of stimulation, too much of rote learning or drilling of letters, words etc… When this happens, the child just turned off his/her brain to whatever that is given to him/her. They will act like they don’t know how to read simple words or recognize letters, etc…. The brain is just bored and waiting for new ideas, something fresh and stimulating.
  Just to share with you one experience I had with this special child who is very, very smart. His mother sent him to me when he was about 4 years old. At that time, he was sent to many schools and language centres. His mother wanted the best for him. He was at this popular language centre and the problem was this — he could already read but they put him in a level whereby he was drilled to write pages and pages of letters. In the end, this child just shut off his brain and refused to learn. He started to not recognize the letters when asked by the teacher. To plainly put it, he started acting “dumb”. His mom got frustrated and panicky because she realized that her son is regressing instead of progressing. She came to me and asked for help. After observing and assessing him, I realised his problem and I told his mom that she had to trust me. Believe me, it is not easy to ask a typical Malaysian mother to let me play with her child while she is paying me. It was during the school holidays and I worked with this child everyday. Instead of giving him more work to do, I decided to do the opposite. I tried to create an environment where he can play and be happy in a learning environment. I tried to get to know him and to build a close bond between the teacher and student. I try to find out what he likes and what he thinks. After that I slowly and indirectly gave him some work to do in between his play. There is learning, there is teaching but the child doesn’t realize it. It’s all in a fun way! Everything worked out fine. This child is now in Primary 4. He is doing very well in his school and he is very vocal, expressive in his thoughts and ideas, he is smart and he reads and writes very well. His plus point is his creativity in his writing.

Well, I hope this little insight has been beneficial to you. May we learn from mistakes that have been made and strive to make decisions to help, instead of hinder our children’s learning.

Christmas is a fun time for children. It’s a time their brains run through all the presents they want. Well, for my kids anyway. So I told them they should write a letter to Santa. And you know what? They were actually very excited about writing to Santa. Straight away they grabbed paper and pencil and started scribbling away. Even my 4 year old son who is just learning to spell didn’t complain about not being able to spell. He wrote:

Der Sata I want cranformus and power rangers

Okay, so I helped him a little (the power rangers part).

My daughter didn’t just write one letter, she wrote several notes to Santa and put it under the Christmas tree for him to read. Let me tell you a little bit about my daughter. Sometimes I give her writing assignments like write me a story about blah, blah, blah. And what do I get? Whine, whine, whine. But writing to Santa was done so enthusiastically.

To fuel their excitement, I searched on the net for websites where they can sent emails to Santa. These websites send back a reply to your mail, making it look like Santa wrote it. My oh-so-innocent daughter really believed that Santa wrote to her. She even asked if she could write to say good night to Santa.

TIP FOR THE DAY:
Christmas seems to be an ideal opportunity to encourage literacy skills in children. Just because it’s the holiday season, learning doesn’t have to stop. Not only get them to write to Santa, you could also have them write Christmas messages in your Christmas cards. Read Christmas stories as a count down to Christmas. They are usually full of messages of love, kindness, sharing and giving. Be creative and I’m sure you will find many literacy activities to do during the Christmas season.

MERRY CHRISTMAS!

Here are 10 tips on how to get your child involved when sharing a book together. When running through this list, do consider the age of your child and his/her capabilities.

1. If it’s a book that you have never read before, introduce the cover page and book title then have them guess what the book might be about.
2. Ask them to identify where the story begins. We may think it is common knowledge to know which is the front / back of the book, where is the first page, where do the words start on a page etc… but very young children have to be taught these things.
3. Run your fingers under the words as you read. This will help them make the connection that the print in the book is important i.e. the words tell the story and mommy/daddy is not just making up the words. It also shows them that reading goes from left - right.
4. Have them turn the pages for you. BabyD is now 10 months and he can turn the pages of his board books (with a little help of course). So, this is something you can do even if they are very young.
5. Talk about the illustrations in the book. Link them to words on the page. This way they learn that pictures prompt the words and the story.
6. Elaborate on the story to increase their understanding. Connect the story and the characters to their own life. For example, “Do you remember when you fell down, like the little boy in this story?”
7. Encourage them to make predictions. Before you turn the page, have them guess what might happen. Children love suspense.
8. If it’s a book that you have read many times, have them retell the story to you. It’s okay if they can’t read yet. Encourage them to use the pictures in the book as a guide.
9. Leave out keywords for them to fill in. Children will usually memorize familiar stories.
10. Ask them to find a certain word on the page. It could be like the “I spy…” game. Children just learning the sounds of the alphabets could be prompted to find a word that begins with a particular sound. For example, “I spy with my little eye a word that begins with /c/”.

When my children were babies, I would sing nursery rhymes to them. Favorite ones were Humpty Dumpty, Hey Diddle Diddle, Jack and Jill, and Itsy Bitsy Spider. Not only does it entertain them, but it helps to build their language and reading skills later on. Rhymes have many benefits:

• It’s a great learning tool because it is fun. It is easy to learn and easy to remember.
• It helps them be familiar with word families such as cat, mat, rat, fat or hit, fit, kit, bit.
• Helps build their phonological awareness. Meaning they learn to distinguish the different sounds in words. This skill is important to their reading success.
• Develops their ability to recognize language patterns and structure.
• When learning to read, they can use their knowledge of rhymes to help them predict words they do not know.

Don’t assume your child is learning to rhyme in preschool/kindergarten. My bet is they will first be taught to recognize the alphabets and the sounds of the alphabets. Then they will learn to identify the initial/first sound of objects. For example, /a/ for apple, /b/ for ball etc…. With my children, I found when they had polished up their ability to recognize initial sound, they started to have problems with their rhyming skills. For example, I would ask “what rhymes with ball?” and they would say “bat.” Their concept of rhyming was confused with using a word with the same initial sound.

Anyway, just saying that rhyming is a great learning tool and even though your child is going to school, you should check to see if their rhyming abilities are being cultivated. Some of the things I’ve done with my kids to help them learn rhyme:

• Worksheets where they have to match pictures that rhyme (not words but pictures).
• Reading books with rhyme e.g Dr. Seuss books.
• Playing ‘what rhymes with …’ in the car.
• Online games such as Scholastic’s Reggie Loves to Rhyme and BBC’s Digby Mole’s Rhyme Game.

Our latest game is an expansion of the “what rhymes with…” game. We would pick two rhyming words and then create sentences. E.g. Fat and Hat
I ate so much I grew so fat
And then I couldn’t wear my hat

Doesn’t matter if it is ridiculous. Actually, children love ridiculous.

So, have a good time
Learning to rhyme
Make up good ones
While eating your buns

They say when teaching children literacy, you should teach both reading and writing. The two go hand in hand. I agree 100%. Reading helps them write better and writing helps them read better.

Recently my daughter picked up the hobby of making cards and writing notes. We did thank you cards and a Father’s Day card together before. I guess the idea of making cards and notes got stuck on her. And the best part is, her younger brother also followed suit and has started writing notes too. It is really hilarious to see their writing at this stage as they are just learning. It is interesting to see how they try to put the sounds together. Even more interesting as you read what they have to say.

Here is one from my daughter (6 years old):

Thank you for all the thing you give me. And the things that make me happy. Here is a song for you:
If you are happy an you know clap your hand if your happy an you know clap your hand.

Another one says:

have lovely day. have fun. have more love. love more. have good childen.

Checkout my son’s (4 years old)

duir mume I hav a qasan wiyoudowak

Translation = dear mommy, I have a question, why you do work?

Here are a few tips to encourage children to write:

1. Give them free excess paper. To keep your expenses low, stock up on used paper that they can recycle.
2. Stock up on various writing, drawing and art utensils such as pencils, color pensils, marker pens, glitter pens, crayons, stamps, stencils, stickers, glue, tape, scissors etc…. Children love variety.
3. Make notes and cards together to give to other people.
4. Write notes telling them how much you appreciate them. Also to convey messages like “I am your toy dinosaur. When you don’t take me home, I feel very sad.”
5. Don’t worry so much about spelling mistakes. Appreciate their effort. If you want to correct their spelling, set aside a specific time for “spelling class.”
6. Have some ‘nice’ colorful paper too. I bought a stack of colourful post-it notes and my children went ga-ga over it. They took several pieces and stapled it together to make a mini-book. They couldn’t wait to write on the colourful paper.
7. Write letters to them and put them in the mail box. My son waits eagerly for the postman everyday and feels disappointed when only Mommy and Daddy gets mail.
8. Sit down and write together. Don’t always leave them to do it by themselves. For example, I update their journal every week (at least I try to) and I have them by my side so they can put in their thoughts.
9. Let them write out the shopping list. You can dictate it as you rummage through the kitchen cupboards and fridge deciding what to buy.
10. If they can’t write yet, let them draw, draw, draw. Let them get enthusiastic about putting pencil to paper.