BOB Books & Early Reading
November 23, 2016
A few months after I published Born Reading: Bringing Up Bookworms in a Digital Age, my daughter took an interest in learning how to read.
We started with a set of BOB books, a beloved 35-year-old series that helps kids take baby steps into the world of reading.
Olive loves shuffling through this boxed set of skinny books and reading them to her grandparents. To expand the experience, I just discovered This Reading Mama’s excellent printable activities for the series.
Sanjay’s Super Team Inspiration
February 28, 2016
Did the kid in your life love Pixar’s The Good Dinosaur?
The film included the Academy Award-nominated “Sanjay’s Super Team,” a brief animated movie that told the story of a boy learning to appreciate his father’s religious traditions.
The animated short ended with an epic superhero-style mythological battle inside the kid’s imagination, and all the art was literally inspired by “The Little Book of Hindu Deities” by Sanjay Patel.
Professor Astro Cat’s Solar System
February 25, 2016
Does the kid in your life dream about visiting the stars?
For the second year in the row, I served as a book app judge for the Cybils Awards–the annual Children’s and Young Adults Bloggers Literary Awards that celebrate the best books and apps.
The winning app was Professor Astro Cat’s Solar System, an interactive science textbook about our space neighborhood.
Homemade Digital & Print Books
February 3, 2016
In Born Reading: Bringing Up Bookworms in a Digital Age, I included a whole section about making books and digital books at home. Homemade books will help your kids stay creative for the rest of their lives.
My friend Ethan Minsker is an author and zine maker in New York City. For years, he’s created homemade magazines with other writers, artists, and East Village characters. In Born Reading, he explained how he turned bedtime stories into simple homemade books:
“At bedtime, I make up a story with my daughter as the central character. Each night I refine the story paying attention to how she reacts. Then I write them down and have my wife illustrate them.”
Minsker then prints these homemade books like a ‘zine (two are pictured above): “It becomes a family project. Now that they are printed my daughter sometimes selects her own books to read at night.”
How To Beat Math Anxiety
November 10, 2015
Do you have scary memories of math? If you suffer from math anxiety (and I most certainly do), you need to work hard not to pass on this fear to your kids.
While researching my book, I turned to Laura Overdeck and her excellent Bedtime Math books for support.
Overdeck worried that most math workbooks and textbooks can be too dull for kids. So she wrote math problems tackling topics kids love, like candy, flamingos or ninjas.
Electric Company Collaboration
November 3, 2015
The primary advice I give parents in Born Reading: Bringing Up Bookworms in a Digital Age is deceptively simple: “Share a book, app, eBook, audiobook, or any kind of literary experience. Don’t let your kid spend too much time alone with a device.”
It can be really difficult to find apps to play with your child, since the VAST MAJORITY of app designers only create apps for solo play.
My daughter and I loved playing with The Electric Company Party Game: Lost on Prankster Planet (you can download it for Apple devices or Amazon devices), an app that beautifully illustrates how families can use a device TOGETHER.
Creating Talk Time
October 5, 2015
How much “talk time” do you spend while reading with the kids in your life? The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) just released “How To Advise Families on Media Use,”a set of helpful guidelines for doctors, parents and caregivers.
The new paper stressed how kids learn best through interactive experiences: “Neuroscience research shows that very young children learn best via two-way communication. ‘Talk time’ between caregiver and child remains critical for language development.”
Reading is the easiest way to build “talk time” into our busy lives, and I found lots of great book and app recommendations while researching Born Reading…
Why Kids Need Nonfiction
August 17, 2015
When was the last time you read a nonfiction book with the kids in your life?
As schools around the country adjust to new Common Core standards, children will spend dramatically more time with nonfiction reading, or “informational texts.”
If you are interested in learning more about informational texts, I will tackle Common Core standards and nonfiction books during a free webinar this week, if you are interested in joining us.
Drawing Contest Craft
July 12, 2015
How can you keep kids reading once the book is closed?
I’ve never been much of an artist, but I created a simple game I call “Drawing Contest” to keep reading experience going in our house. Basically, my daughter and I take one of our favorite books and try to draw a picture of the main character.
It all started with this “Let’s Draw Arthur” lesson from author Marc Brown.
Sharing Apps with Family
June 2, 2015
What’s your favorite app to share with the kids in your life?
Last month, the Joan Ganz Cooney Center asked me to write about the “Preparing for New Experiences” section of its free interactive book about Family Time with Apps.
My essay explored lots of different apps that parents and children can use together, but my main example focused on potty training. Check it out:
“The process of potty training requires weeks of patience, and the physical process needs to be reinforced every couple hours for months for the activity to sink in properly. So this is the perfect time to use ALL the tools at your disposal to prepare your child for potty training: read books together, download great apps, learn some catchy songs, and play games with stuffed animals.”