Tuesday, March 22, 2011

Ready to read?

Life comes full circle and the same can be said about reading to your kids. In the US, one is encouraged to begin reading to one’s kids from as early as their infancy. Each stage of childhood is characterized by a certain type of book – books made of cloth and vinyl for newborns to chew on; touch and feel books as they grow up; lift-the-flap books as they turn one ; board books for toddlers with single liners that rhyme; As your toddler turns two and then three, you start looking at the picture books section of the library or the book store. With the increase in the attention span of your little one, you then progress from books with more pictures and less prose to books with more prose and less pictures. Then, your baby is all of sudden a pre-schooler taking baby steps towards reading. So your interest shifts to early readers or brand new reader books that have simple rhyming one- liners easy enough to encourage the budding readers. Don’t be surprised if you feel its déjà vu except it’s not you but your little one reading those one liners! Boy...they grow up so fast!!

Today I helped Abhay read a nice little book titled “Ducks Go Vroom” a Ready-to Read Step 1 series, by Jane Kohuth and illustrated by Viviana Garofoli. This book appeals to kids on two ends of the spectrum – babies/ toddlers as well as early readers. Three lively ducks go vroom and zoom to their aunt’s place where they quack and yak, slurp and burp, crunch and munch and later groan and moan with their stomachs full which only lets up when they scrub and sweep all the mess they’ve made which in turn makes them yawn and finally sleep! With four to five words on each page, not too difficult for the early readers and at the same time challenging enough to make them feel a sense of accomplishment of having read all by themselves. Abhay did make it to the last page with my assistance, but for him it seemed more like work than play! Welcome to the world, my little one!

3 comments:

  1. Divya,your writing is wonderful !
    I like reading your blog..and look forward to the next one..I am going to read all these books suggested by you to Satchit !

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  2. Divya,
    When I read your blog i feel I
    could not read such books to Divya!.I hope you are really Re living childhood.
    Amma.

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  3. I just wonder how you manage to get/read so many books on variety of subjects and your concise narration of their contents in your blog is really marvellous!. You may perhaps have to do a lot of exploratory work to lay your hands on such classy books in India to keep the tempo of your blog going ?
    kedlapurandar

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