Category Archives: Arts

The Ultimate Destination for Beginning Readers: Feeling at Home with the Great Books

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Ever wondered what the endgame looks like in the journey of learning to read?

This is the ultimate destination for beginning readers: feeling at home with the great books.

But how do we get there?

Let’s dive in and discover how early reading skills are the first step towards a lifelong love affair with the great books.

Laying the Foundations with Reading Skills

It takes about two years to teach the skill of reading. The steps are simple:

  1. Teach phoneme and grapheme correspondences. Some reading programs call these phonograms and phonogram sounds.
  2. Teach prefixes, suffixes, and bases. The academic term for this is morphology.
  3. Teach homophones and investigate how the spelling system works.
  4. Practice with as much frequency as possible.
  5. Discuss reading material to ensure comprehension.

It’s a time consuming process, but it works.

And guess what?

This skill of reading is the stepping stone to the world of great books.

Easily Navigate the Great Authors

Some kids learn to read and then read junk or barely anything at all. Don’t let that happen to your kid.

Enter “Great Authors of the Western World,” a curated list of great authors from Leisure Stacking. This article isn’t just a list; it’s a compass pointing towards the minds that shaped the West.

Here’s the deal:

By introducing young readers to these authors, you open doors to great minds, ideas, and conversations.

Don’t trust a school to open these doors. You can do it. You’ve got this.

Find Expert Guidance

Whether you’re just starting out or already familiar with the greats, there’s always room to go further. And the best part? You don’t have to do it alone. Expert guidance is just a click away on YouTube.

Here’s the secret:

In “YouTubers Recommend 52 Great Books of the Western World,” you’ll be introduced to 4 literary enthusiasts. These experts are not your average YouTubers; they’re knowledgeable guides who can help you navigate the rich landscape of great books.

Why is this important?

Every reader finds their way into the realm of great books through a different ‘catch’. It might be a particular author’s style, a compelling historical context, or a theme that resonates personally.

For you, it could be one catch; for your kids, another.

These YouTube guides offer a spectrum of catches, ensuring that no matter where your interest lies, there’s a pathway waiting to be explored. They provide personalized entry points into the world of great books, making them accessible and enticing.

From Basic Reading to Literary Exploration

Remember when it took effort to lift each word off the page?

Now picture the journey from those short words and simple sentences to the rich, complex narratives of great books. It’s a transformation, from learning to read to reading for pleasure and insight.

And here’s the exciting part:

This transformation is what Read About Reading aims to ignite. It’s about bridging the gap, making the leap from foundational skills to profound literary appreciation.

Encouraging Young Readers to Read Great Books

Looking for ways to foster a love for great books?

Start by sprinkling the names of great authors and great books into your conversations. Summarize the stories, introduce the characters, and ignite imaginations with intriguing plot points. Make these authors and their works familiar and inviting, creating a sense of excitement and curiosity around them.

And remember:

Every great book was once a stranger. Encourage exploration, patience, and a sense of adventure in young readers.

Stay Focused on the Big Picture

So, what exactly is the big picture?

It’s about nurturing a journey. The path from learning basic reading skills to feeling at home among the pages of great books. It’s a rewarding adventure, filled with discovery, growth, and joy.

Now, I’m curious to hear your thoughts:

What was the first great book that made a lasting impact on you, and why? Share your story in the comments. It’s these personal experiences that enrich our collective journey through the world of literature.

And finally, a call to action:

If you found this guide helpful, share it with friends, family, or educators in your circle. Together, we can keep the big picture in focus and guide more young readers towards the rich world of great books.

Why Books Based in Reality are Best for Kids 0-6

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In acquainting myself with the books authored by Maria Montessori, I took away that literature grounded in reality is best for kids 0-6. Recently, I went back to find some of the direct quotes that lead me to this conclusion.

Maria Montessori developed her insights into how children learn and grow through direct observation. She would introduce them to activities and observe their reactions. She did the same with books. She introduced them to many kinds of books. She wrote in “The Advanced Montessori Method” that “The readings we used were numerous and of great variety: fairy tales, short stories, anecdotes, novels, historical episodes. Specifically there were the tales of Andersen, some of the short stories of Capuana, the Cuore of De Amicis, episodes of the life of Jesus, Uncle Tom’s Cabin, The Betrothed, Fabiola, stories from the Italian wars for independence, Itard’s Education of the Young Savage of Aveyron.”

She tested a wide range of literature and found that children get the most out of literature grounded in reality. She wrote that “In general the child will listen to anything that is really interesting. But certainly some surprise will be occasioned by our discovery that the children liked above everything else the readings on Italian history and the Education of the Savage of Aveyron. The phenomenon is sufficiently curious to merit further consideration.”

Maria Montessori encouraged the teachers she trained to use the time when children were drawing to read great literature to them. She wrote, “The children work many, many hours on drawing. This is the time we seize for reading to them and almost all their history is learned during this quiet period of copy and simple decoration which is so conducive to concentration of thought.”

Maria Montessori concluded that reality is better than fantasy. Here are just a few of her quotes on this:

“The results here witnessed led us to many a reflection. We succeeded in teaching history and even pedagogy by means of ‘reading.’ And, in truth, does not reading embrace everything? Travel stories teach geography; insect stories lead the child into natural science; and so on. The teacher, in short, can use reading to introduce her pupils to the most varied subjects; and the moment they have been thus started, they can go on to any limit guided by the single passion for reading.”

“Children are much more sensible to the true and beautiful than we. They must be shown complete pictures of reality, which vividly suggest fact and situation.”

“The beautiful and the true have for them [children] an intense fascination, into which they plunge as into something actually necessary for their existence.”

“This creative imagination, which is ever returning to reality to gain inspiration and to acquire new energies, will not be a vain, exhaustible, and fickle thing, like the so-called imagination which our ordinary schools are trying to develop.”

“…and every child should be able to experiment at first hand, to observe, and to put himself in contact with reality. Thus the flights of the imagination will start from a higher plane…”

“…every lofty writer and every great orator perpetually links the fruits of the imagination with the observation of fact…”

“…it may be said that in order to develop the imagination it is necessary for everyone first of all to put himself in contact with reality.”

“…we should no more force it [imagination] with a fiction than we would put a false mustache on a child because otherwise he will not have one till he is twenty.”

What all of these quotes suggest is that perhaps non-fiction, historical fiction, and reality-based fiction genres are better than fantasy, myth, fables and fairy tales for kids 0-6. I hypothesize that young children would indeed get more out of the first set of genres than the latter. I’m testing my hypothesis on my children with a robust list of books based in reality. I could not find a sufficient list, so I prepared my own book list here.

My list of books based in reality already includes 468 titles in the non-fiction, historical fiction, and reality-based fiction genres. It includes many selections from the non-fiction Let’s Read and Find Out About Science series, some absolutely stunning biographies like “Henri’s Scissors” by Jeanette Winter, and charming reality-based fiction like “How to Heal a Broken Wing” by Bob Graham. The list is geared toward my 5-year-old, but my 2 1/2-year old is enjoying many of the selections, too.

I’ve found so many amazing books based in reality that I’ll be focusing on these until my 5-year-old turns 6 in May 2016.

Making an Affordable Land and Water Forms Activity

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I’ve had the Montessori land and water form trays on a wish list for a long time. The best deal I know of costs $40.23 plus $25.74 shipping for a grand total of $65.97 for these land and water trays from Mindset Learning. Since I’d be buying them for a home and not a school, it’s tough to put that much money toward building a better geography vocabulary for two kids and maybe their friends. So, I’ve found a better, less expensive way to introduce geography terms at home.

Now, the “official” Montessori land and water form trays are exciting to kids because they get to create lakes, straits and other water forms by pouring water.

However, I’ve found that it can be equally exciting for kids to build islands, isthmuses and other land forms by molding them out of salt dough onto paper plates. Then, they can use blue paint to create the water form. This has turned out to be a very affordable land and water forms activity for us. In fact, I made it entirely out of materials that were already on hand. Buying the supplies would be affordable, too. It would cost about $10-$12 with the most expensive thing being the tray.

Here’s a photograph that shows how I’ve set this activity up to be used at any time:

land and water forms (1)

The parts include:

  1. Land and water forms 3-part cards resting in 1/2 an egg carton box. (The cards pictured here are from Montessori Helper, however the Helpful Garden has a beautiful free set.)
  2. Salt dough (2 cups wheat flour, 1 cup salt, 1 cup water) in a plastic container
  3. Blue tempera paint in a tin
  4. Paintbrush
  5. Example landform project (the isthmus)
  6. Under the isthmus, there are paper plates to make more land and water forms
  7. Everything is organized on a KLACK tray from IKEA

The moment I set this down my daughter started using it. (That’s why the lids to the salt dough and paint containers aren’t shown.) She built an island and a bay for her first two land form projects. Here they are:

Screen Shot 2015-07-18 at 1.00.09 AM

These projects have definitely solidified what the terms bay and island mean for my daughter. This was evident when we read a picture book set on a bay.

The book was called “Who sank the boat?” by Pamela Allen. Here’s a photo from the inside of the book:

bay book

When my daughter saw the bay in the illustration she ran over to her bay land form project and brought it to the table by our reading chair. When we finished reading the book, my daughter collected little figures for each character in the book and used them with her bay project to reenact the story.

Here’s the end of her reenactment:

The big takeaway here is that for 1/6th the price of official land and water forms, you can teach the same thing and perhaps even have a little more fun.

Aside

Exploring the Reading Code: AI Makes an A

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This week, I had the pleasure of catching up with my friend Judy at Wordy Worm Reading. I filled her in on how my daughter is starting to build words with the moveable alphabet (she’s 3 ½ and has built the words mom and pig in my presence, possibly others at school.)

pig

Judy suggested that now would be a good time to teach some of the multi-letter vowel phonograms such as ‘ai’ and ‘ee’, which are great for beginners because they make just one sound.

So, I started today with the ai phonogram, following tips from the Wordy Worm program. While Stella napped, I set up some “clues” for the ai phonogram on her desk. When she woke up, she joined me at her desk where we sang the Wordy Worm ditty for ai.

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Next, my daughter chose to decorate the origami sailboat (pattern via origami-make.com) on her tray with crayons and glue. I also drew out the ai phonogram on a piece of paper for her to color, but she was far more attracted to working with the sailboat. While she decorated the boat, I wrote down the ai words from the ditty on a dry erase board. She asked me to “add snail” to the list, so I did:

ai-word-list

Later for bath time, I filled the pail with the p-a-i and l souns letters and invited my daughter to wash them (as seen on the Souns Talk Weblog). She happily accepted and while she washed them, we sang the ditty for ai together a couple more times.

pail

We ended the night with story time. We read three books, including a perfect book for teaching the ai phonogram called Tails by Matthew Van Fleet.

tails-book

Do you know of any other good books with lots of occurrences of the ai phonogram? If so, share them in the comments.

Tomorrow, we’ll continue our study of the ai phonogram by checking the mail together.

Modified ABC Song with the Letter Sounds

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Tonight at bedtime, my 31-month-old daughter asked me to sing her the “ABCDEFG song.” I wanted to take the chance to reinforce some of the letter sounds she’s been learning, so I added them into the traditional ABC song. Here’s the lyrics:

A says /ă/, /ā/, /ä/. B say /b/.

C says /k/ and /s/. D says /d/.

E says /ĕ/ and /ē/. F says /f/.

G says /g/ and /j/. H says /h/.

I says /ĭ/, /ī/, /ē/, /y/. J says /j/.

K says /k/. L says /l/.

M says /m/. N says /n/.

O says /ŏ/, /ō/, /ōō/, /ŭ/. P says /p/.

Qu says /kw/. R says /r/.

S says /s/ and /z/. T says /t/.

U says /ŭ/, /ū/, /ōō/, /ŏŏ/. V says /v/.

W says /w/. X says /ks/.

Y says /y/, /ĭ/, /ī/, /ē/. Z says /z/.

That’s the letter sounds from /ă/ to /z/.

My daughter was very happy to have me sing this to her twice in a row. Then she closed her eyes and went to sleep. It was such a sweet, easy and educational bedtime.

Mooseltoe Activity: Make a Paper Moose

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Today, for an activity to accompany the Mooseltoe book from our Christmas book advent, I made a pattern for a Mooseltoe-inspired paper moose. The pattern can be downloaded free here.

If you make this with pre-reading kids, you can sing the following phonics ditty while working together:

“The name of the letter is M. The sound of the letter is /m/. Make a moose, M says /m/.”

Once the moose is done, you can change the ditty to “I made a moose, M says /m/.”

Then name the moose with a name that begins with the letter M and change the ditty again to insert the moose’s new name into it. For example, “Meet Mortimer the moose, M says /m/.”

Count up to Christmas with a book advent

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This holiday season, my family is going to count up to Christmas by opening and reading one Christmas book each day. I found the idea on the Oopsey Daisy blog here, where it’s called the Christmas book advent.

I’ve selected a book for each day and posted them to Google calendar. I’ve added notes to some of the calendar entries for activities we might do to accompany each book.

My book selections are:

Happy holidays!

2-Year-Old Toddler Learning the Letter Sounds

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As I mentioned in my post about the phonogram clue box, I’ve been using the Wordy Worm Reading program to teach my daughter phonics. I purchased the program’s kit in June 2012, when my daughter was 25 months old. In the short 5 months since then, I’ve been lucky enough to capture a few of our Wordy Worm moments on video.

The program includes short songs for each phonogram. I started by teaching my daughter the program’s songs for the single-sound alphabet.

In this first video, you can see that I did all the singing while my daughter played with the clue box item under my modeling and encouragement. This video was taken when my daughter was 25 months old:

In this second video, just 2 months later at 27 months old, my daughter would chime in with a letter sound here and there when encouraged:

In this third video, just 2 months after that, at 29 months old, my daughter started singing some of the ditties I’d been singing to her on her own, unprompted. Right now, she’ll only sing them unprompted. If I ask her to sing them, she’ll ignore the request. So, the clue box items are really working here because they spark her to sing the songs on her own. This independent activity lets me know that she’s really learning.

Over this same period of time, my daughter’s language skills have rapidly progressed. It’s been wonderful to have her phonics skills progress right alongside the language advancements.