Play is Learning!

Love this post over at Not Just Cute! It will help you understand why play is so important for our little developing people. Give yourself lots of credit if you are allowing your toddlers and preschoolers to play and use language with their imagination.

Early Chapter Book Favorites from Imagination Soup

Melissa Taylor is always working so hard over there at her blog Imagination Soup. Here are some great new books for reading aloud to your beginning readers or for independent reading for readers who are a little bit more advanced.

Post Discovery: Great Struggling Reader Tips

A fabulously written post about helping your reader! Find it here on IThinkWeCouldBeFriends.com. I love the author's suggestions, especially having kids read to younger relatives or friends. It's great to have a baby around and have them read board books with simple words and pictures. They get the words solid in their learning memory while having a fun interaction with someone little. Great confidence builder! I know some libraries have programs where you can go read to dogs now, too!

Parent Tip Sheet for Reading at Home

I've been using this parent tip sheet for my parent workshops and in my classroom. I love it because it is a very accessible way to understand how you can help your child interact and comprehend what they read. We had the discussion recently about how some parents want to read the entire book with no interuptions because that's how they think it "should"be done. It is in fact the opposite of what should be done. Educators researched what good readers do and they found that good readers are constanly interacting with their reading. If you pay attention to yourself while you're reading, you'll find that this is true. You ask yourself what a word means, you catch yourself if you're mind is wandering, you reread a part that was confusing. It's an interactive process. Hope you enjoy this handout! It's available for free download here at Teachers Pay Teachers. You have to sign in to get an account, but it's super easy. I encourage you to search for other fun free downloads at that site, too!! There are amazing treasures to be found!

Finding Books for Beginning Readers

One of my own personal struggles as a teacher was to find easy books for my beginning readers. Even books that usually say "Level 1 - Beginning Reader" are way too hard for actual beginning readers. I just found this great post from www.123homeschool4me.com that has a good list of books for our young readers. Some of these books are not necessarily so easy that you could just hand them over to your reader and expect her to be able to read it on her own, but after a few readings together she could easily manage it.

Though parents are sometimes worried kids have just "memorized" the book, it is not something to be concerned about. They need to see themselves as readers and see and say those words over and over again before they are cemented in their minds.

Anna over at The Measured Mom has solved the problem of finding easy books by creating a ton of fabulous FREE printable books for beginning readers.You can find those here.

Happy Reading!

Celebrities Reading Books and other ways to give yourself a break...

Tired of reading out loud? So done with the same two favorite books? Let this website take over for a while...

Celebrities Reading...

I had no idea that the Screen Actors Guild has literacy programs. That makes me so happy! You can go to their site, StorylineOnline.net, and have your children listen to wonderful story books read by qualified orators ranging from Al Gore to Sean Astin to Rita Moreno. As they say on their site, "Reading to children has been repeatedly shown to improve their reading, writing and communication skills, logical thinking, concentration and general academic aptitude… as well as inspire a love of reading. The Screen Actors Guild Foundation records well-known actors reading children’s books and makes graphically dynamic videos so that children around the world can be read to with just the click of a Storyline Online video book image.Many teachers play SAG Foundation’s Storyline Online videos for their students. Doctors and nurses play Storyline Online videos for children in hospitals. And parents and children around the world watch Storyline Online videos millions of times every month."

Have Fun Practicing Sight Words

As my first grader is getting into the school year, we are receiving reminders from his teacher to keep practicing those sight words. I just found this super easy game from one of my favorite blogs, I Can Teach My Child. It definitely fits my requirements for very little set up involved and easy to understand. A great bonus is that if you have children at different levels, they can all work on their own word lists. Love it! I hope you enjoy it, too!

Fantastic Travel Games Full of Language

Hi Everyone!

Hope that you have been busy enjoying your summer and taking some vacations like we have. I just found a great list of language-rich travel games from Trevor Cairney's blog. Check them out if you have a minute!

So Many Reading Lists for Summer!

Pragmatic Mom wrote a fantastic post with just about every possible reading list for the summer that you can think of! At the end there's even links to some online summer reading programs. Check it out here.

Read & Go For the Summer!

Love this post from No Time For Flashcards! Perfect for some summer adventures:)