Dear Moms, Dads, Relatives, Educators and Business Owners!

Winter is a good time to get the kids hooked on reading. I am not a fan of Winter but the cold weather does encourage snuggling up in bed with the kids in the evening and getting stuck into a good adventure story. The kids love it when there is load shedding because we have to read by torchlight which makes the story more exciting. The only con is getting to sleep after reading a chapter that ends in an exciting moment. There’s a lot of tears and resistance but eventually the kids manage to kick me out of the bed so they can get some sleep.

We have all types of books, from wipe clean books, puzzle books, touch and feel books to Atoms and Cells, Atlases, encyclopedias, phonics, audio and story books. Encourage your children to read by exposing them to all types of books. My daughter’s favourite bed time story book when she was 2 years old was a book called Atoms and Cells which was a hand me down from a friend. She was fascinated by the pictures of bacteria, viruses, single celled animals and plants. She did not understand half of the words I was reading to her, but I think she got a kick out of hearing me read words like mitochondria and deoxyribonucleic acid. Try pronouncing that correctly when your brain and body are totally exhausted at the end of a grueling day!

We still read touchy feely books and board books which we bought when the kids were not even a year old. They have bits and pieces missing here and there where they doubled as teething rings. We have also hung onto those lift the flap books even though they have been converted into rip the flap off books. We still read the moldy old bath books. Eric the Elephant’s waterhole is looking rather green and slimy these days.

I find the old classics like Nancy Drew, Famous Five, The Wishing Chair and The Faraway Tree very entertaining because of the old fashioned style of writing. I am also intrigued the way the kids are often locked up in cupboards or beaten by guardians or weird characters in the books. The parents don’t seem to think it strange that their children disappear for an entire day or night and come back talking about strange creatures they had tea with. In this day and age we would have the drug squad investigating in an instant.

My husband gets board of the usual fairy tale stories and makes up his own endings. The kids get upset with him when he doesn't get it right. He is a bit like the author Jon Scieszka who takes a well known fairy tale and tells it from another point of view. An example is The True Story of the Three Little Pigs that tells the well-known story from the wolf's perspective. Mr. Wolf explains about the very bad sneezing cold he had on the day he went to visit granny to borrow a cup of sugar. It was all a misunderstanding. Read and decide for yourself, Big Bad Wolf or media set up! I love the description of his book Squids will be Squids. “If you ever wanted to gossip about your friends, this is how you do it. Like Aesop did. Change the people into animals, add a moral, and presto. Now your stories aren't rude gossip and bad jokes. They are fables.”. Sounds like a method therapists should be using.

These days you can find a children’s book on just about any subject. I recently came across a press release on a book published in April entitled “My Beautiful Mommy” by Dr. Michael Salzhauer. The book explains plastic surgery to children. Does a book like this help children to understand or teach them to be superficial. The jury is still out on this one.

If you have a large collection of books stacked together on a bookshelf, it can be a bit daunting for small children to select one for you to read. A useful tip given by my friend Jill Savill to ensure you rotate your books is to select 5 every week and put them aside. Setting them up in a themed book corner is ideal. Read one book on the Monday. On the Tuesday read the Monday book and a second book. On the Wednesday read the Monday book, the second book you chose for Tuesday and a third book and so on. Thanks for the tip Jill.

Melanie Hartgill has kindly supplied us with a very useful article on Games to play to assist with reading development©. Melanie will be on e-TV's Great Expectations on Monday 12 May at 11.30 am, discussing sibling rivalry and bullying! Be sure not to miss it!

What are your favourite children's books and can you suggest any tips to encourage reading?

We hope all our mum readers had a wonderful Mother's Day yesterday (11 May).

Cara
Editor