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Strollerderby
Not sold on the benefits of summer reading? Persuaded by your second-graders argument that a vacation should really be a vacation, and reading is too much like school?
Then add today’s Well blog post to your own summer reading list. In it, Tara Parker-Pope tackles some of the research behind your school’s and libraries ubiquitous reading programs. Turns out, those books are good for more than just gold stars from your neighborhood librarian.
The “summer slide” in reading skills is well documented, and effects low income students most. A new study shows that just giving kids books – any books – makes up for that lost time in a big way.
You walk to the park. You buy the right toilet paper. You cut out meat. You don’t just recycle, you reduce and reuse. But your efforts to live green might come into conflict with a certain truism of raising smart kids. All those books you stock their shelves with — so that the grow up literate and smart and destined for college? Those books have got a carbon footprint worse than you could imagine.
Even the so-called “green” ones. And the ones about rainforest destruction! Continue reading »
Nicole Paitsel, Newport News Daily Press blogger reported in the Savvy Shopper yesterday that Borders book stores nationwide are giving away free kids books this summer. The program, called the Double-Dog Dare Summer Reading Challenge, started May 4th and is “available through Aug. 26.” Borders “gives kids ages 12 and under a free book for every 10 books they read.” That’s a pretty good deal! A free book for reading 10 books – and they don’t even have to be purchased at Borders. You simply have to fill out this form, listing the books your child read at home, school or the library. Continue reading »
Probably, you remember being taught to read. Methods vary: children are taught reading by phonics, by memorization of sight words, by Montessori techniques. But pretty much all of us are painstakingly led down the path to literacy by teachers, parents, librarians, and any other adult involved in our early development.
In a new blog at Psychology Today, Peter Gray argues that kids can’t really be taught to read. They learn when they’re ready, in the way that works for them.
I suspect that parents have been complaining about the books schools have assigned or made available just about as long as there have been books and schools. For some, Harry Potter’s wizardry is unacceptable while for others, it is the existence of gay penguins that is problematic. Some object to racism or bigotry and some to political views. And sometimes, a kid just isn’t ready for a book.
Okay, I’ll admit to pushing 40 and being an enormous freaking crabapple curmudgeon, but this little headline really sent me over the edge:
“Children who use technology are ‘better writers’”.
Yeeeaaahhhh. I have young folks as Facebook friends, and sorry, I have no high hopes here for The Great American Novel — or even a cogent paragraph — out of most of these kids. Continue reading »
It sounds like something you’d expect to read in a newspaper from the 50′s: Latino children are not as advanced, academically, as their White counterparts. Of course, the research done at UCLA, UC Berkeley, and the University of Pittsburgh does not simply say that White kids are inherently smarter than Latino kids; ideas like that were disproved long ago. Instead, the findings highlight the importance of parents in helping children succeed in school.
Continue reading »
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